


Tales of a Child Vampire

by shullieq



Series: Exquisite Desire [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Multi, Prequel, Supernatural - Freeform, Vampires, Werewolves, fae
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-07 20:40:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15915834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shullieq/pseuds/shullieq
Summary: Prequel to Exquisite Desire.The story of Deidara's life as a human in Sasori's possession, his creation, and new life as a Child Vampire.[Sadara Akakun requested a piece on Deidara's time with Sasori, and I couldn't get it out of my head, so I wrote it.]





	1. The Human Years - Part 1

When he woke up, he could hear them talking about him just outside the door.

The low murmuring made him shift from dozing to full alertness with such speed it was as if one of them had shouted next to his cot. His heart speed up as adrenaline pumped through his veins in a desire to run or fight, but he forced himself to lie still. He wasn’t a runner, but a fighter, though he had failed over and over to fight off the monsters that had plagued him. Night after night, day after day. The second voice was one he didn’t recognize, but he was terrified that He would be bringing some new evil when He entered. Sometimes he wished he had never given into the temptation of explosives after seeing the demonstration for mining work in the big city. If he didn’t, he’d still be free and not in this hell hole. He wanted to run again, to feel the wind rushing over the mountains where the goats grazed happily, but his limbs were thin and weak from being trapped in this room, unable to move more than a few feet from the bed to piss in the rancid pot allotted for him. He missed running, even the very thought made his muscles tense in anticipation and the desire to move, but he forced the thought away. If he moved, they would hear the sounds of metal clink together and they would know he was awake.

They might already know.

His terror spiked again, and the voices outside fell silent. His fears realized.

He squeezed his eyes shut as the door to his cell opened and The Monster entered. He couldn’t keep the terrified whimper out of his throat as he came closer to the bed, staring down at him with his evil brown eyes. He said something in a language he didn’t understand, but the other man seemed to understand perfectly because he responded angrily, pointing at him on the bed. The Monster glared down at him, but he felt that The Monster was really glaring at the stranger who looked more foreign than The Monster with his hair like fire. The Monster’s eyes seemed to rest on the raw bruises the straps of the sedation chair had left, seeming to know what they were and angered him just as much as the stranger did.

“Go away,” he croaked, his voice ragged from the day full of other monsters who called themselves doctors who had strapped him down to the sedation chair and tried to cure him.

He hated that The Monster looked younger than him, but stared down at him as if he was a roach on the ground. He made a gesture of silence and turned his back on him and the argument continued. Angry at being ignored and told to be quiet as if he was a child, he sat up in bed and threw his pillow at The Monster. “Get out!” he shouted, ignoring how his raw throat cracked. “Leave me alone!”

“Be silent,” The Monster murmured. The stranger gave a harsh laugh, gesturing at him in what was clearly a mocking gesture. The Monster seethed with an anger he recognized, and backed away as far as his bonds would allow him, but The Monster had held his hand out, using witchcraft to hold him so absolutely still that he couldn’t even move his mouth to form words to shout at him. The argument continued, the stranger gesticulating imploringly while The Monster remained cool and calm, looking angry and kept shaking his head which only aggravated the stranger more.

Finally, the stranger pointed at him on the bed, smirking at The Monster, who shook his head fervently. The argument became more and more heated until the stranger suddenly shouted, and flame appeared from nowhere, filling the room with blazing heat. The Monster turned away from the danger to grab him and pulled him and the bed as far from the fire as he could as effortlessly as if they were made of paper. The Others returned, The Monster’s followers, and chaos filled the space. The distant occupants of the many other rooms, chained to their beds like him, screamed and screamed; their voices added to the mayhem. Suddenly there was a yank at the chains binding his legs, arms, and then neck and he was lifted from the bed and he heard The Monster calling something to his followers and suddenly he felt them moving. Running away. Running from fire and the smell of burning flesh.

When they stopped, he was dropped unceremoniously onto something soft, yet hard. The smell of grass filled his lungs and he gasped at its familiarity, reaching out to grab at the blades he had not touched for nearly eight months. He could hear people around him, still filled with terror and exclamations, but he didn’t care. He pulled at the grass and brought the shoots to his face, breathing and breathing them, feeling life rushing into him again. He was outside.

He was outside.

He scrambled to his hands and knees without thinking and tried to run, but someone grabbed at the dangling chain around his neck and tugged him back. “You will stay,” murmured The Monster, his hand sliding into his dirty hair that had grown long and pushed his face against his thigh in what might have been an attempt at a comforting gesture while he choked and pulled at the metal on his neck to reopen his airways.

His voice seemed to attract the attention of the others and they crawled to him, clamoring in languages he didn’t know. They were creatures like The Monster, but the strength, power and surety The Monster had was lost to them in their terror as they sought reassurances from their master. He sat at The Monster’s feet as instructed, rubbing his neck and staring up at the sky where the stars were beginning to dim and vast expansion of sky was beginning to become distinguishable from the hills he knew to be green or perhaps they were purple from the bloom, he didn’t know what time of the year it was. Regardless of the season, dawn was coming.

“Get up,” The Monster commanded after the panic had subsided. “We’re walking.”

“I don’t want to,” he protested with a soft grunt. “I want to watch the sun come up.”

“We cannot see the sun,” The Monster said, tugging on the chain around his neck.

“No!” he shouted, gripping the chain so it wouldn’t choke him more and put all his weight on it, kicking and fighting even as The Monster began to walk, dragging him behind like an unwanted pet. “I’m not going with you! I’m not! Let me go! Let me go! I want to go home!”

His shouting was ignored until his voice was barely a squeak and his tired, weak muscles gave up their fight and it was all he could do to keep the chain from choking the life out of him. The group followed The Monster in silence until a man lifted him up off the ground to carry him. “Syd Sasori,” he began cautiously, then began to speak hesitantly in another language. The Monster seemed to consider what he said then tossed the end of the chain to the man and it was finally easier to breathe. The last thing he remembered was the group beginning to run together faster than any cart he had ridden on until he slipped into unconsciousness, rocked to sleep in the firm, but gentle grip of The Monster’s minion.

When he awoke again, it was to the familiar ache of his withered stomach begging helplessly for food that rarely came. He groaned softly, stretching one limb after another with his limited mobility before realizing that what he had been sleeping on wasn’t the hard, thin mattress he had been sleeping on for months, but something soft and smelled like the hay barn he used to play in. Memories returned, and he startled awake, sitting up and staring around, but he could see nothing. Where ever he was, was so dark that even when he waved his hand in front of his face, he couldn’t see it. He wondered where The Monster was and where his minions were. He took a breath and tilted his head from side to side, trying to determine how big of a space he was in. He stood on his feet, his atrophied legs trembling, and was about to take a step when a voice sounded nearby.

“Stop.”

His heart seemed to skip a beat and he jumped so badly that he tripped and fell on top of a very cold, still body that grunted softly. He tried to push himself away, but invisible hands grabbed him and held him down as he fought, knowing by familiar feel who it was.

“Enough,” said The Monster. Fingers gripped his throat to choke the fight out of him and when he settled, the fingers released him and he heard a few sharp strikes of flint and a soon a single candle burned, revealing the pale face and red hair of The Monster. He backed away until he hit another still body then another as he moved away from that one, his panic rising as he knew he was surrounded, but The Monster only watched him.

“Where am I?” he demanded after The Monster made no move to come to him.

The Monster continued to stare at him, the candlelight making his eyes look oddly white as though he were blind. “I can see you,” The Monster commented. “I never saw you during the day before, but…”

“Where am I?” he demanded again.

“Why can I see you so clearly?” The Monster murmured softly in wonder.

He glared at him for not answering, then stared around the room they were in. It seemed to be an underground storage place. The feebly flickering light showed barrels in the corner and root vegetables hanging shrunken from nails embedded in the beams above. A cellar. But a cellar would have…

He leapt to his feet again and ran for the wooden stairs across the room. There was a moment of the exhilaration the pounding of his bare feet on the dirt ground gave before something grabbed his ankle and he fell hard, his chin hitting the ground painfully. As he groaned, he heard shifting behind him and whatever had grabbed his ankle clutched his arm, dragging itself on top of him with a moan of longing fingers tracing the area where his chin had scrapped the ground. The Monster gave a soft order and the creature stopped.

“ _Por favor,_ Sasori,” the creature crooned in French.

The Monster made a low rumbling noise then turned his head to stare up at the ceiling. “ _Ne le tue pas_ ,” he murmured, and the creature purred happily in the back of his throat and sank his teeth into the leg in his hands.

He had only felt The Monster’s teeth in his skin before and it burned like fire, like a thousand of small knives spreading under his skin. The other creature’s fangs were completely different, only a light pinch before his body was flooded with an entirely new feeling of intense and horrible pleasure. He gasped out a moan and tried to crawl away but suddenly there were other hands on him. Other teeth. The feeling became worse until he was shaking and sobbing as the pleasure became pain and his already weak limbs lost all the will to fight as his muscles convulsed. The Monster looked on, watching with his evil gleaming eyes until he finally spoke sharply and, reluctantly, all the teeth were removed from his body. 

“Come back,” The Monster demanded in his own language.

“No!” he shouted with a sob, his raw voice echoing in the small room.

“ _Silence_ ,” someone else murmured in French. The word was repeated as he protested, kicking and fighting as he was tugged and shunted across the room by strong hands until he was back to The Monster.

“You are mine,” The Monster murmured. “You will stay.”

“I won’t!” he insisted, trying to crawl away, but the hands pushed him back.

“You will,” growled The Monster, his cold fingers reaching out to finger the chains still dangling from his wrist and pull him close. “You’re mine.”

“I’m no one’s!” he shouted, yanking the chains away.

“Mine.”

“No!”

“Be silent.”

“No!” his foot kicked the candle and darkness fell, but he could still feel The Monster pulling him closer and he fought with renewed panic. His arm was grabbed and sharp teeth poured angry poison into his veins like fire. He screamed in pain and tried to hit and kick The Monster away, but he did nothing but bruise his hand and knees on The Monster’s stone like skin until his limbs fell, weak from blood loss and exhaustion, his voice no more than a pathetic whimper and The Monster removed his teeth.

The days slipped in and out for him after that. Just as The Monster had only come to his room at night, they traveled only by night and stayed in dark places during the day and he was not permitted to leave. He ate what he could find when they paused, even when the berries made him sick, but it was never enough and none of the creatures thought to feed him. He was too weak and hungry to walk and so he was carried. He became sick and feverish as they traveled, believing in his delirium that they were rushing over the dark landscape with the Wild Hunt was on their tail. His mind would be clear every so often, when a warm honeyed liquid was dripped into his mouth from The Monster’s fingers when he used his shrunken body as his personal pillow and dreams of a life that wasn’t his haunted him when he slept, but the clarity never lasted until one day, a woman with skin browned in the sun was in front of him when he opened his eyes. She was touching his face, feeling his forehead with a concerned frown then turned to speak to The Monster in a firm voice. He was vaguely surprised that she seemed so unafraid of The Monster until he realized that the woman was speaking to the elder of The Monster’s followers, being allowed to believe that they were the leader of the group. He was wrapped up in a warm blanket and given thick, warm milk that made his starved stomach seem to scream with joy, but the woman was wise enough to allow him to make himself sick as he tried to take the bowl from her. The Monster slipped onto the bed with him, watching him in curious fascination as the woman placed a towel drenched in cool water to his forehead. 

“You should have said you were hungry,” The Monster commented after permitting the woman to place a blanket around himself as well and handed him a bowl of something, not seeing him for the creature he was and not the small child he appeared to be.

He glared at The Monster and started to turn his head away from him, but it moved back of its own accord. “Stop it,” he said hoarsely straining to move his head on his own.

“Stop what?” The Monster asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Stop your magic moving me, un!” he coughed, the force of it making his chest hurt enough to whimper.

“It isn’t magic,” The Monster said, moving closer and lifting him up off the pillows with the gentleness he used when the doctors had hurt him during the day. “I am not a witch. I am sorry I forgot to feed you.” The shackles that had held him down were broken away by the inhuman strength the Monster possessed, his scarred and bleeding wrists brought to gently to The Monster’s nose before returned under the blankets and the bowl was brought to his lips and warm liquid carefully spilled in and he drank it obediently, too hungry to fight him and when the bowl was gone, they curled up to sleep together.

They didn’t stay with the woman long, but continued on when his fever broke, still traveling in an agitative manner at night, and he realized as he clung to the back The Monster’s followers that he was leaving his home further and further away. The further away they went, the more he fought and struggled against them, even as they gained more normal humans to travel with them – dredges that would not be noticed in their absence – and he was not forced to feed the other creatures alone. The Monster was furious about his unwillingness to follow them; he could hear his angry voice inside the dark cave they had all been hiding in when he was finally able to sneak passed their watchful eyes and throw himself down the steep muddy hill to escape.

When he felt safe enough to stop running, he stretched his thin arms above his head, feeling the rain washing away filth and dried blood from his body. The sun was up, but he couldn’t see it behind the dark storm clouds that made him feel as if he were standing under a waterfall. The raindrops were thick as summer storms and the lightning that flashed across the sky was the most impressive he had ever seen. He felt gloriously alive for the first time in months and let out a peel of maniacal laughter as the thunder boomed across the mountain peaks with a force that he could feel.

The mountains were unfamiliar, he knew he was miles and miles away from his home. His stomach growled, but not in the twisted way it had been. The adult humans with them now were more conscious about making needs known and he was eating much better, but no one wanted to talk to him or play with him because of The Monster who they were all afraid of. He rubbed his stomach and looked down at the hospital gown he still wore. It was so thin and worn that it was nearly see through, so he peeled it off and ran naked across the slippery grass, happily throwing himself down another slide the rain created until he heard a voice shouting after him.

Pushing his muddy hair off his face, he turned to see a white bearded man, a goat switch in his hand and a dripping hat on his head staring down at him. “What are you doing, boy?” the man asked, staring at him.

It had been so long since he had heard someone speaking his own language other than The Monster that it took him a few seconds to realize what he was saying even with the strange southern accent he had. The man had given a slight scoff and turned to walk away when he jumped up and began scrambling back up the mountain side. “Wait!” he called. “Sorry,” he added, giving him a wide grin. He wondered if he should tell him the truth – that he was kidnapped and stolen from his home by monsters who drank blood at night, but quickly decided against it. “I’m lost,” he told him, putting on a face of a nervous child. He was always being mistaken for a much younger person and used it to his advantage as often as he could at home. “My clothes tore…”

“Just because it’s summer doesn’t mean you should walk around like a babe,” the man said gruffly, gesturing for him. “Come. Help me take the goats home and out of this rain.”

He followed, happily petting the goats who stared at him curiously with their square eyes but followed the two humans back down the mountain until they came to a small cottage with a goat house a few paces away; the soggy goats went inside the warm building without much of a fight, happy to shake the rain off their heavy coats. He went inside with the goats and pushed his own sopping hair off his face. The man had gone into the small wooden house, but returned a few moments later with two bundles. “Here, boy,” he said gruffly, tossing him one of the bundles which contained a pair of trousers and a shirt. Both were too big for him, but he rolled up the sleeves and tied the belt tight, mumbling a thank you as the man pulled a milking stool over and opened the other bundle, placing slices of bread, a hunk of cheese and a thick slice of dried sausage down for him. “Eat. You’re too skinny.”

“Thank you,” he said, much more gratefully, throwing himself down to eat.

“Hey!” the man snapped, thwacking his leg with the goat switch. “Slowly.” While he obediently slowed down, the man hung a lantern with a fat candle on a hook hanging from the ceiling, then knelt down to milk one of the goats then handed him a bowl a few moments later. “Drink. What is your name?”

He lowered the bowl, licking his lips as he stared at the man. “My name’s—…” he stopped short, eyes widening, and he felt himself beginning to shake a little as a panic rose in him. He opened his mouth again, but it was dry and no name came out. 

“You don’t know your name?” the man said roughly, though not aggressively, staring back at him. “You’re not lost, are you boy?”

“I am,” he insisted. “But…” His breathing intensified, the thick milk in the bowl slopping over the sides as he shook.

The bowl was taken from him and placed down on stool next to the cheese. “Calm down, boy,” he said calmly, watching him with a gruff tenderness that reminded him of his father. He couldn’t even remember what his father looked like anymore, the memory of him ripped away like his name by torture and abuse at the hands of the asylum. He felt some childish part of him begin to panic. “You stay here, with my goats where it’s warm. It’s safe. Tomorrow, we’ll eat breakfast then you can help me.”

He nodded obediently, still unnerved, but hurriedly eating his meal and licked the bowl clean of milk, and, after the man had gotten up to go inside his house, crawled around to find a nice patch of hay to sleep on. The rain still pounded down on the roof and the dark clouds made it impossible to tell what time of day it was, but he knew he had run from the cave for at least a few hours. The walk down with the goats had maybe been an hour but it still seemed as if it was afternoon. He wondered if he was going to get bored, but the exhaustion and terror that plagued him since The Monster entered his room came crashing down on him now that he was relaxed, and he fell asleep quickly.

His stomach was what woke him. The meal had spoiled it and it wanted more. Maybe the man would give him some more food. He had mentioned breakfast in return for helping him with chores. Outside, the rain had stopped though there were still a few droplets still loudly making their decent from the roof to the waiting ground below. The goat house was completely silent. Perhaps the goats were sleeping too, but it was almost too quiet. Maybe the man had taken them out again after the rain had fallen. He stretched his limbs out and felt his hand brush something furry. He knew by the feel of the fur that it was a goat, but it moved oddly when he touched it and he opened his eyes to look.

The goat stared back at him, eyes milky and blind in death. Gasping, he scrambled up and stared. It was just a head, its tongue hanging limply out of its open mouth. His hand slipped on something cold and wet and he fell again. In the light of the candle burning in the lantern, he saw his hands were red and feeling panic rising in him again he stared around at the entrails decorating the inside of the goat house like grotesque May Day festival decorations and in front of the door, arms splayed like a scarecrow was the remains of the old man, his abdomen emptied out and used with the goats in the macabre adornments. Swallowing, he backed away to the corner, even as the man’s head lifted to face him and his mouth opened though it wasn’t the man’s voice that spoke.

“I told you to stay,” said The Monster unseen, the man’s mouth moving with the words. 

“Go away!” he shouted as he had so often. “Leave me alone.”

“I will not,” mouthed the old man. “You belong to me and you will stay with me.”

“I won’t!” he yelled, grabbing the closest thing – a goat’s foot – and hurling it at the door. It struck the top of the man’s forehead and bounced outside where it landed with a pathetic splash in a puddle left by the rain. The Monster finally stepped into the building, his eyes dark and blazing in the candlelight. “I won’t. And I won’t stop running away. Ever. I hate you. I want to go home!”

“You have no home,” The Monster stated as the man’s body crumpled to the floor, no longer under his control.

“I do!”

“They didn’t want you,” The Monster shot at him, his face pinched in irritation. “That’s why you were where I found you.”

“They just didn’t understand! I want to go home! I want to see my parents!”

“You have no parents.”

“Everyone has parents, stupid!”

The Monster glared at him and he felt a sense of smugness rising in him that he seemed to have gotten the upper hand for once. The Monster’s eyes traveled around the room to examine his handiwork, then back at him, looking disappointed. “You didn’t scream,” he stated, with twist in his mouth that was nearly a pout.

“What?” he asked, blinking in confusion.

The Monster’s shoulders hunched slightly, making him look more like a child than the evil thing he was. “I thought you would scream, but you didn’t,” he stated his booted feet scraping hay away from himself.

He looked around the room at the intestines hanging from the ceiling with other body parts than looked back at The Monster. “It’s just blood,” he stated, folding his arms up defensively.

“You aren’t upset about him either,” The Monster stated, his shoe nudging the body on the ground.

“Being upset won’t make him not dead,” he spat back, reaching for something else to throw, but The Monster simply stepped aside to avoid the horn that sailed through the air. They glared at one another for some time before his anxiety at being caught again slowly settled down and his brain stopped working in survival mode. The Monster seemed less intimidating as he did sometimes when he sat in his room at night and told stories trying to get him to talk instead of hurting him; it had always been so unnerving. “Can… can you read?” he asked quietly.

The Monster made a face again as if he had asked something offensive. “Of course, I can read,” he scoffed. “Can’t you?” When he shook his head, he looked more confused. “There was a priest in the village, don’t they teach you letters?”

“I ran away to play instead,” he replied defiantly, hating him for the mocking tone in his voice. Who would want to sit in a stuffy room with someone who slapped you for making a mistake? It had been one of many marks against him that had gotten him locked away. “You read those things the doctors wrote about me, didn’t you? I saw you,” he persisted, sliding away from the wall in his eagerness. “You can read my language, too?”

“Yes,” The Monster said, clearly uncertain at where he was going with this. “Where did you get those clothes?”

“The man gave them to me,” he answered, refusing to let the subject be changed. “Was my name written on them?”

“You look strange,” The Monster stated, giving him a once over. “I have only seen you wearing the hospital gown…” There was another silence as he glared at The Monster impatiently. “Yes, along with your date of birth and notes they had taken of you,” The Monster replied. “You lost a considerable amount of weight by the time I found you,” he added as an afterthought.

“Do you have them? Can you show me my name?” he asked, trying to keep the hopefulness out of his voice.

“Why do you want to see it?” came the reply.

He didn’t answer, ashamed of the truth and worried that The Monster would mock him for it. They stared at one another again for long seconds of silence, and he realized this was the first time he had seen The Monster without his minions close by, unless they were waiting outside. He seemed so much less of a monster and more like a boy, someone his own age or younger, a potential friend united in the absence of adults. It broke his resolve to remain silent. “I don’t remember my name,” he mumbled, his jaw clenching in an attempt to keep his panic down. “I… I can’t. Why can’t I?”

The Monster’s insolent stare seemed to soften a little as he watched him, stuffing his hands into the pockets of the coat he wore and seemed to age, appearing more like a child pretending to be a smaller version of the doctors looking over him with professional opinion. “Well, they hurt you,” he stated finally, looking angry at the thought of what the men, doctors, and priests had done to him in the name of science and selfishness, seeming to forget the trauma that he had caused himself. Nights of pain and screaming until he blacked out from it. “Perhaps the anguish of being demonized for as long as you were and never called by your name made you forget it. I will give you a new name.”

“I don’t want a new name,” he snapped. “I want to know my name!”

“It’s not important,” The Monster stated, pulling something wooden from his pocket. It was a curiously shaped wooden object that came with two sticks connected by a leather cord. He began rolling the object back and forth between the two sticks, almost absentmindedly for something to do with his hands. “I will think of a better name.”

“It is… important,” he said, trying to remain focused on being angry while his eyes followed what was clearly a toy as The Monster flipped it in the air and caught it again, not even looking at the toy as he did so. “I don’t… I don’t want a better name. I want… I want my… name… I want you to… tell… What is that?” he finally asked, pointing at it.

The Monster stopped his spinning and looked over at him as the wooden piece swung like a pendulum as its momentum stilled. “It’s a _kongzhu_ ,” he replied. “It was a present from someone when I was in Zhongguo. It’s the country we are going to, in the east.”

“I don’t want to go ther—” the piece began to spin again and he watched its progress as it rolled down the cords before scrambling to his feet. “I want to try. Let me.”

The Monster looked surprised. “It’s just a toy,” he said, not handing it over though it stilled in his hands again.

“I know, I want to play with it, too,” he insisted, coming closer and holding his hand out.

“You want to … play?” The Monster asked, a confused, but eager tone in his voice. The toy was held out and he took it, holding it as he had seen The Monster hold it, but found it was a little more difficult than it had first seemed. No longer a nasty biting creature, but an eager child creature, the boy reached out and adjusted his grip and spread his arms, showing him how to move the sticks so that the little wooden piece would roll back and forth, staying on the leather cord. He worked at it until he could get it easily and The Monster showed him how to snap the cord to cause the wooden piece to fly up into the air and catch it. When he had master that, The Monster had rushed outside again only to come back a few moments later with a piece of thick string tying two sticks together in a makeshift version of the ones he was playing with and told him to throw it to him. They played back and forth for hours, bursting with gleeful childish laughter every time they successfully passed the toy back and forth until his arms ached and his stomach was protesting angrily.

“I’m hungry,” he complained as The Monster tossed the ball up in the air to himself, spinning as if he was dancing as he caught it.

“I’m sure there is food in the house,” The Monster said, not looking at him as he continued to play with the toy. “He won’t be needing it anymore.”

He looked down at the body he had forgotten about while they played among the carnage The Monster had made in an attempt to scare him. That was perfectly true. The bodies were a reminder that it wasn’t another boy in front of him, but a beast and he hurriedly ran passed him, surprised to see that it was dark outside, though the sky hinted that it would rise soon. He went inside the dark cabin, lit only by a fire that smoldered helplessly from lack of wood to feed it. He placed a few logs on the embers and looked around. The building looked handmade and self-repaired, as did much of the simple pieces of furniture, and he was delighted to see sausage and cheeses in the house, as well as potatoes and wrinkled tomatoes and jars of preserved berries. His clothes were dirty from the blood and hay and he found some more clothes of the man’s; the pants were too big to wear comfortably, but he pulled on a long-sleeved shirt that fell passed his knees. He pulled a blanket from the bed in the corner and sat down in front of the growing fire with hard bread, cheese, sausages and tomatoes and stretched his legs out so that his toes warmed while the potatoes blackened under the flames.

The door opened and closed again as he was putting wild strawberry preserves on the bread and he tried not to flinch. The Monster came and sat down next to him, shifting the blanket so that they were sharing, shoulder to shoulder. He considered inching away, from him, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. After a moment of silence in which The Monster had stretched his legs out to imitate the way he sat, he held out a piece of cheese for him.

“I don’t eat food like you,” The Monster said softly, pushing his hand away gently. “I only drink blood. I prefer yours.”

“Why?” he asked, trying to slide away from him now, but The Monster simply moved with him.

“I don’t know,” was the reply. “I have never tasted anything like you before, and I have tasted many, many different peoples, but nothing like you. You will stay with me, so I can have you when I want.”

“Stop saying that,” he muttered, a tomato squelching as he squeezed his hand.

The Monster was silent for a while then turned his brown eyes on him again, not a monster, but a boy. “Do you like to play games?” he asked with an almost hopeful tone in his voice, drawing his feet away from the fire. He had taken his shoes off at the door.

“Yes,” he said reluctantly.

There was another long silence between them. The bread and cheese were gone and he was beginning to fall asleep with a slice of sausage in his hand when The Monster spoke again. “You have never asked me for my name,” he said.

“I didn’t know you had one.”

“Everyone has a name,” The Monster said in a tone that was clearly mocking his earlier statement. “My Made call me by my name all the time, haven’t you heard it?”

“I don’t understand their language,” he said defensively.

“You will learn. We travel a lot, and we need to get away from that…” he trailed off, his voice growing angry. He waited a moment to stuff his anger back down before speaking in his boy-voice. “I don’t remember my first name either, it’s been too long so I forgot it, so I made one for myself. My name is Sasori.”

“That’s a stupid name.”

He was shoved to the ground violently to the ground, the blanket tugged away so that he nearly fell into the fire. “You’re stupid!” The Monster shouted, grabbing the remaining food he had gathered to eat later and threw it into the fire. “You’re a stupid little boy who no one wanted except for me!” The thick cord he had used for the makeshift toy to play with him was suddenly around his ankles, so tight they felt as if they were cutting into his skin. “You are not running away again.”

“Get this off me!” he spun around to struggle against the knot, but his fingers couldn’t break it.

“Not until you promise you won’t run away again.”

“It’s hurting me!”

“Promise.”

“No!” he shouted, grabbing the leg of the hand carved chair and swung it back, but the colliding of the wood against the other didn’t seem to phase him at all. Instead, a hand swung out to strike him across the face and the room which had been glowing in the warmth of the fire dimmed to black.

When he opened his eyes again, there was a woman kneeling over him with a rag in her hand. It was one of the normal people like himself who was brought along to travel with them. Her hair was like straw and her face thin from all the biting the others had given her, though she was still fatter than himself because she was old enough to know how to get her own food where he wasn’t allowed to leave and couldn’t get any unless someone brought it to him. The ground below was rocking slightly below him and he wondered if they were on a cart, but it was too rhythmic for that.

“There you are,” she said, smiling when she saw he was awake. She spoke his language, though it was with an odd accent he sometimes heard from traveling salesmen from the south. “You’ve been asleep for a long time. We were worried.”

“What happened?” he asked, trying to sit up, but found his head hurt too much.

“You ran away and the master had to go after you,” she explained, placing the wet rag back on his forehead. “I think you fell down, your eye is black.”

Memories flooded back to him – his escape, the wonderfully wild storm and The Monster finding him and killing everything on the little farm where the old man lived alone. He reached up to touch his tender face. Her worry wasn’t about himself and his health, it was because she was terrified of what The Monster would do to them if he didn’t wake up. “I didn’t fall down,” he said bitterly and threw the blankets off himself and tried to get out of bed, but a tangle on his legs and a pitching of the floor made him nearly fall awkwardly, but the woman caught him and pushed him back onto the bed. He looked down at himself and found his ankles still bound in the tight cord placed there by The Monster to keep him from running away. “Do you have a knife?” he asked the woman.

She looked frightened, her eyes darting down to his legs. “You shouldn’t, child,” she said in a whisper. “He’ll be so angry.”

“Who?” he asked automatically, though he was sure he knew already.

“The master,” she said, her voice even lower. “The one who likes you so much. The little boy.”

“The Monster?” he asked, not bothering to lower his voice.

“The… the others call him ‘master’,” she said, lowering her voice so that he could barely hear her. “Master Sasori.”

That had been the name that The Monster had told him before he made fun of him and he had hit him in anger. He touched his head again, feeling the lump that had swollen there and grew angry again. “I don’t care,” he said recklessly. “I want a knife.”

“I can’t give you one,” she said in a harsh whisper that sounded desperate. “He’ll hurt me. Please be quieter.”

He shouted in response and she jumped in fright. “I won’t be quiet! I want a knife! Where am I?”

“Shh,” came a few other voices. He stared around at the crates and barrels tied down and the low wooden racks that he could see not only held supplies and cargo, but people staring at him. He could see each of the other creatures and the handful of humans like the woman who was backing away from him now as though frightened she would be placed in the same category as himself.

“Give me a knife!” he shouted again, his voice echoing slightly in the small space. 

Her eyes frantically darted around before she fumbled to pull out a small knife from her pocket with shaking hands, seeming to decide that keeping him quiet was better than allowing him to get away again. With only the flickering lantern light to guide him, he hacked at the cords around his ankles as the woman scrambled to get away from him, ignoring the pain as he accidentally cut himself from the pitching of the room. When his legs were free, he jumped to the ground, which was a mistake because his feet were numb from being bound and the room was still pitching. He rolled when he hit the ground and tried to stand. Now that he wasn’t lying down, the pitching seemed worse and there was water sloshing over his bare feet and hands as he pushed himself back on his shaking legs, but he made a rush for the stairs he could see at the end of the room.

He saw the familiar red hair out of the corner of his eyes and made a darting move to give it a wide berth, but when he reached the stairs and glanced back, The Monster was only watching him go, a nasty smirk on his face. The magic he kept casting on him didn’t come, even as he began to climb the stairs. A feeling of dread filled him as continued up the stairs and threw himself against a trap door, pushing it up and rolling out onto a new room similar to the one he had left. The smell of fish and salt filled his nose and he didn’t understand what it was, but ran through the other barrels and crates to another set of stairs, running up and bursting out into a sudden brilliant sunshine, the ground under him pitched even more and his weak legs gave out from under him again and he fell, rolling until he was able to grab onto something and he heard people’s voices shouting and singing and sat up, blinking against the light that hurt his eyes. He was sitting on the deck of a boat – a ship. He had only ever seen pictures of boats this big and clutching the rail nearby, he stood slowly and stared, wide eyed around him at the great expanse of water that cradled the ship in its ever-moving waves. The white crests of little waves distinguished currents and patterns in the water. The sun was shining on the surface of the water in a twinkling way that made the water seem safe and inviting and the sky was so big and blue he wasn’t even sure he was seeing the color properly.

A sudden shout behind him made him realize he’d been spotted, but there was no where to run. He was grabbed by strong hands and pulled away from the rail. A man with skin cracked from the sun said something to him, but he didn’t understand his language and could only stare. He was a big man with a large beard and hat that shielded his eyes from the bright sun. There was a gun at his belt and he wore boots that thudded solidly on the wooden deck. Terrified, he tried to shrink down to the ground to get away from him by making himself heavier, before another man walked over. This man wore a similar gun at his hips as well as a sword, but it was the wide, stiff rimmed hat he had seen in picture books that told him this was the captain. He looked down at him with such a stern look, he gulped quietly. The captain placed a hand on the other seaman’s arm and pointed down casually. The first man released him and they both looked at him both cautiously and curiously.

In their silence, he stared around again and an intense feeling of dread filled him again. The Monster hadn’t stopped him from running because there was nowhere to go. He stared up at the two men, then finally backed way from them and ran to the other side of the ship that showed the same scene as the other. There was no ground in sight. No trees. No mountains. How could there be no mountains in sight? You could always see mountains… Behind him, one of them said something to him and he turned back in time to see one of them giving him a slight shrug before they turned and walked back to their work. Frustrated, he hurried to the ropes that ran up to the tall mast and began to climb them, passing other men working and talking to one another. They paused to look at him as well, but no one stopped him the entire way to the top where a flag fluttered merrily in the wind. Even at this height he could see nothing.

He was not a boy who cried often, but as he stared around at the vast sea, knowing that he was so far away from his home that a return seemed impossible, a stinging came to his eyes that had nothing to do with the salt in the air. Clutching the top of the mast to keep himself from pitching off into the rocking sea, he sat down in the crow’s nest and stared out to watch the few puffy clouds floating by. He sat there for hours, watching the sun slowly sink into the sea, until the darkness became deeper and he felt someone climb up into the crow’s nest with him.

“You’ve burned yourself in the sun,” The Monster stated, sitting down next to him with his legs sticking through the rails like he did, their feet bumping against one another as they swung with the ship. He didn’t answer, keeping his arms folded over the top of the rail, turning his face away so as not to look at him. “Here.”

He glanced sideways and saw a goblet and wooden plate in his hands and wondered how he had been able to climb the ropes without dropping anything. “I don’t want it,” he muttered with a soft grunt, though his stomach betrayed him by growling at the smell of food.

“Yes, you do,” was the reply. The goblet was nudged against him and he saw that it was full of foamy thick milk. “There’s a few cows down below deck, they keep them for milk and later food or trade. Drink it. You like milk. You drank goat milk at that house.”

He obeyed begrudgingly, sipping the milk that was still a bit warm. It coated his aching stomach and now that he started, he couldn’t stop, drinking the whole goblet though he still wouldn’t look at the other boy. After a few moments, the other nudged him again and held out the bowl. He was half a mind to slap it out of his hands, but the smell of bacon, eggs, potatoes, and onions prevented him from doing so. Even more grudgingly, he took it and began to nibble on everything until it was all gone. “I’m never going home, am I?” he asked quietly, staring miserably out at the sea.

“No,” was the unkind reply. “It is not safe. That witch wants to kill you. I won’t let him.”

“I want to go home,” he said sadly.

“It’s gone,” came the blunt reply. “It’s an adventure.”

“I don’t like it,” he grunted.

“You don’t like anything,” came the annoyed reply. Then a pause, “except the sun.”

“I like lots of things,” he argued, turning his head to glare at the other boy. He was a boy now, not a monster. It was strange how he seemed to shift from one to the other. “I just don’t like _you_ ,” he added nastily with another soft grunt.

The Monster made a slight huffing noise, but didn’t respond to the jab. “Stop making that noise,” he stated. “What did you call me down below? ‘The Monster’?” he sounded amused.

He didn’t answer. The woman’s terrified whispers made sense to him now that he thought about it, trying to keep their conversation from being overheard.

“I told you my name,” he said again. This time his tone sounded a little unhappy. It seemed as though the other was upset he wasn’t calling him by his name, though he sounded a little pleased by what he had been calling him. “And I’m not a monster.”

“Yes, you are,” he argued.

“No, I’m a vampire.”

“That’s a made-up word,” he grunted, turning his face to look away from him again.

“No, it’s not,” came the annoyed tones again. “I said don’t grunt like that. Don’t be stupid. Just because you haven’t heard of something before doesn’t make it fake.”

“Shut up, un!” he snapped, emphasizing the noise just to annoy him. He wondered what a vampire was because it was true he had never heard of such a thing before. He knew about witches of course, and he had said that the stranger with fire had been a witch. He sincerely hoped that all the spooky stories people told children to scare them weren’t true, a few of them coming to mind despite his determination not to make conversation with his captor. “Are werewolves real, then?” he asked before he could stop himself.

“Of course.”

“What about the tall man?” he asked, a little more hesitantly.

“Who is the tall man?” the boy asked curiously.

“He kidnaps children at night and takes them to the forest and eats them,” he said, wondering if he remembered the story the old woman who was with the traveling caravan told the children who gathered around to listen. Old grandmothers always told the best stories.

“I don’t know if he’s real,” came the thoughtful response, “but there are creatures who eat children, but there’s usually things that stop them.” Before he could think of another story with monsters to ask if they were real, the boy spoke again. “I need to give you something.”

“What?”

“Do you remember when we were in the asylum and the doctors hurt you,” began the boy, “and I came and gave you—”

“I don’t want it,” he shuddered, hunching his shoulders at the memory. Every time that happened, he had vivid, sometimes horrible dreams.

“I’m not having you walk around damaged,” came the grumble. “Your skin is sunburned, and your ankles are cut from you trying to escape. It will heal it.”

“I don’t care, un,” he muttered, pulling his legs in so he could move away from him.

“I said stop doing that.”

“I don’t care, un.”

A pause and he dropped it. “It’s just a little,” the boy insisted, bring his finger to his mouth then holding it out. He knew from experience that he had bitten his own finger on his sharp teeth. “If you do it, I will teach you a new game tomorrow.”

He made a face, hating himself for the sudden spur of excitement at learning a new game. He did love games. “Your skin will hurt so badly tomorrow you won’t be able to move.” He pulled his legs in as well so that he could turn to face him, shifting closer so they were nearly pressed up against one another. His hand was held out again, bleeding more freely now and he reluctantly opened his mouth and allowed him to press his finger into it, sucking on the digit to get all the blood up. He shivered as the feeling of it slid down his throat and spread to his toes. He hated this because each time he gave him something he felt closer to him, understanding and empathy though Sasori had none of that. When nothing more came, Sasori took his finger away and pulled him close against him, pressing his nose into the curve of his neck to smell him. He flinched, but the teeth didn’t bite him. He just held him like an oversized toy while the boat rocked below them.

Thoughts slipped through his mind that weren’t his own. Sasori had convinced the captain to let his group ride in the cargo hold for a journey to the Orient. He didn’t know what or where that was. It had to be the cargo hold because he was unable to walk in the sun. Not like his new toy who filled his veins with sunshine that didn’t burn him.

“You can’t walk in the sun?” he asked suddenly.

“No,” Sasori murmured behind him. He didn’t like that something had shifted in his mind to change him from a title to a name. He didn’t want to be that close to him. “Well, I can. But I am very old and strong. The others would burn and die. I can stand in the sun, though it is not comfortable and I can’t enjoy it like you do.”

He mulled this over for a while, munching silently on a piece of the hard bread that had been with his food until he fell asleep still held against the cold, smaller body. He woke only once as he was carried down the rope ladder again and into the dark underbelly of the ship and placed in a makeshift bed he had seen Sasori in earlier and the redhaired vampire climbed up with him, using his chest as a headrest as he fell back to sleep.

They were on the ship for weeks, traveling with goods to be sold along the East India trade route. Unable to stand staying inside all day, he ran out as soon as he woke up and spent all day soaking up the daylight until it turned his skin brown. The captain had discussed something intently with Sasori the first night and the small boy informed his followers that their humans had to earn their meat so that the crew didn’t go hungry for them. He learned this second hand from a human who could speak both his language and the language Sasori was speaking – though the man seemed offended that he couldn’t understand French. After receiving a new set of clothes that included trousers, a loose shirt and leather belt that he could slip a rigging knife in, and heavy leather boots – though he never wore them, he learned to help the men on the ship during the day. Because he was so small and light, he was the fastest to scramble up the ratlines and was given tasks of repairing frays and tears aloft. He learned how to swim in the sea which was much different than swimming in the rivers and saw great ocean creatures he had never seen before. He learned to speak the English spoken by the sailors – he particularly loved learning swear words, though he refused to speak to Sasori in the language (except the swear words), which greatly annoyed the other. Still, the self-named vampire eagerly taught and played games with him when he was below deck during the day. He learned to play Draughts, Chess, and various dice games which he also played with the sailors at night when they gathered to drink and gamble together. 

He understood after a few weeks of travel why Sasori had been so eager when he had wanted to play with him. Everyone else was too afraid to play with Sasori, too afraid to make a mistake, too afraid to beat him. He had noticed this when he watched one of the other vampires playing with Sasori seem to hesitate and make a poorly chosen move during a game of chess which allowed Sasori to win instead of the move which might have allowed the minion to win. He had pointed it out, highly amused, and Sasori’s demeanor had switched from smug to furious and demanded if it was true that he had made the mistake on purpose and killed the vampire, tearing him to pieces and throwing his remains overboard. The vampire’s humans cried in dismay, but Sasori didn’t kill them as well, not intending to spoil the blood they offered for the remaining vampires. He, however, was not afraid to beat him and worked his best to do so, gleeful when it happened even though Sasori became sulky and nasty when he did so, smothering his screams with pillows when he sank his teeth into him so as not to attract the crew above.

A few months later they arrived in a strange port, the men gruff and exhausted from the lack of supplies near the end of their trip. With supplements of vampire blood, he was whole and healthy, sitting on prow of the ship and staring wide eyed at the strange new place they were heading to. Sasori had already warned him about not leaving the ship without him, promising pain and suffering if he did so, but with the sun still relatively high in the sky, he didn’t see how the vampire was going to stop him. Specifically, Sasori had said “if you walked down that gangway without me”, which seemed a little too specific to not disobey. He carefully climbed down the bow of the ship and leapt from it to the large poles that supported the dock. This was a mistake. The wood was slippery with sea slime and rough with barnacles growing on it where the tide would rise. He slipped down into the water, wincing and gasping as the barnacles cut his hands and feet. Groaning softly, he swam to the shore and sat down on, blowing on his stinging hands for a moment before he looked up with curiosity, smelling something cooking among the rotting fish of the port.

Sasori found him hours later sitting in a back alley with a bowl of noodle soup red with spices that seasoned the fish that he had worked off for an old woman running a restaurant by scrubbing pans after a lot of gestures and begging. He looked furious with him, but he reminded the vampire that he hadn’t mentioned anything about jumping off the ship in his warning.

The vampire scowled at him, but seemed to accept his response with an annoyed sigh. “I’ll be less specific next time,” he stated, grabbing him by the back of his shirt and tugging him along after him.

Sasori took him to a grand house where his followers were already residing. It belonged to a female vampire dressed in shockingly rich colored robes that dragged on the floor as she sat waiting to greet the visitors. The two spoke in the language he had heard during his search for food, but the woman’s heavy-lidded dark eyes kept drifting passed Sasori to him in interest until Sasori looked back at him, then seemed to ask her a question. She replied, a slight smile crossing her painted lips and he stiffened a little.

“She likes your hair color,” he stated as if her liking his hair color was a trivial thing beneath him. “This is Feiyan, the Master of this area. You all are going to stay with her while I take care of some business. You will _not_ give her a hard time and cause her to desire to kill you.” He made a scoffing noise and folded his arms tightly and glared at both of them and Sasori, after considering him a moment turned to the woman and said, in English so that he would understand him, “he enjoys trying to escape.”

She gave a chuckle and spoke in her strange language to a handful of women also dressed in lengths of fabric like hers and the approached the two boys, seizing his arms in firm, but gentle hands and dragged him away from Sasori, struggling and yelling for them to let him go. He didn’t understand what they were going to do with him and noticed, when he glanced back, that Sasori seemed amused by his panic. He didn’t understand. Sasori was too possessive to give him away, but where was he being taken?

His question was soon answered as he was taken to a room layered with smooth stones and large cauldrons of water that steamed into the air. At first, he feared he was going to be cooked into soup, but then the maidservants of that female vampire became clear as they shed the elegantly dyed fabrics they wore and tied back the sleeves of their white underdresses, stripped him of his clothes and dumped a bucket of very warm water on his head. He protested and struggled, but the women were just as strong as Sasori’s vampire followers and ignored him, scrubbing his dirty skin raw to remove layers of dirt, sea salt, and sweat that had accumulated on him. Fingers rubbed bubbles into his scalp and took to his tangled hair with a strong comb, and he heard a woman commenting disapprovingly, though of what, he didn’t know. A brush was used to clean his nails and his mouth was forced opened and they scrubbed at his teeth which made him gag. They waited for him to recover before beginning again until they were satisfied.

He was miserable as a wet dog by the time they were finished, placing him into a large tub filled with hot water with plants floating in it. He had stopped struggling at this point, accepting his fate and letting the woman continue to work at his hair until she could run the teeth of her comb through it without a single catch. She then sat behind him, singing softly to herself – or perhaps to him – as she massaged something that smelled like sweet flowers into his hair. 

Feiyan came to see him after they had pulled him out and spent time drying his hair and rubbing his body down with oil, ignoring his attempts to push their hands away from him. The way she looked him over made his skin crawl as she knelt down on the shiny wooden planks that separated the house from the bathing stones. “Sasori has told me,” she said in a slow English, “that his Made and humans can care for themselves, but you, in particular, must be … treasured. I do love little boys like you. How would you want me to treasure you?”

“What?” he asked, confused, unable to move away from her as the maidservant came forward with clothes to try and dress him. He tried to tell her that he could dress himself, but she ignored him, or didn’t understand him, but Feiyan gestured for her to stop and he felt uncomfortable as her gaze drifted over his nakedness.

“Your hair is beautiful,” she commented, making a gesture with her fingers pointed down. He didn’t understand, but the women who had cleaned him lifted him up and brought him, clutching the towel to guard himself, to her. She fingered his hair and reached out to touch his face while the women held him immobile. “You will sleep with me during the day.”

“No! I don’t want to, un!” he snapped in a panic, losing the English and slipping into his own tongue, straining to get away from her. She slapped him hard enough to make his ears ring.

“Sasori say you like game,” Feiyan said in a gentle voice as he rubbed his cheek and she scooped him up in her arms. She was much taller than she had looked sitting down. “I teach you new game after you rest from long journey,” she spoke as if she hadn’t just slapped him, taking him to a grand looking room with a large canopy bed made of wood carved elaborately with spider web thin sheets hanging from the upper bars of the bed. She dropped him carefully on the bed and watched him with a greedy smile as he scrambled away from her and tried to cover himself before pulling off her own outer clothes and crawled into the bed with him to hold him there and pet his slowly drying hair.

Sasori returned four nights later and, by that time, he was thoroughly sick of living with this cluster of female vampires. He was eating much better and treated far more kindly by Feiyan’s vampires who spoiled him with sweet things and toys, but they never left him alone or gave him the opportunity to try to escape. He absolutely hated the required scrub down every night, though he did begin to like how they rubbed his head to wash his hair. Feiyan kept him with her during the day when she was unable to move with the sun high in the sky and he had received many more slaps across the face when he disobeyed her. The vampires that had traveled with Sasori were free to leave the compound when they wanted, as were the other humans, so he rarely saw them. When the redhead entered the dining space during dinner, he threw his entire bowl of rice at him. It was extremely satisfying to see the warm rice stick to the startled face of the vampire, even though Feiyan, who had insisted on him sitting in her lap as if he were a baby every meal, slapped him again.

“What was that for?” Sasori questioned in his own language, wiping the grains away from his face as the maid servants hurried to clean up the fallen food from the floor.

He wouldn’t condescend to answer him, throwing the sticks he had been expected to eat with and tried to leave, but Feiyan held him down and picked up her own set of the delicately engraved sticks and picked up a piece of fish and held it up for him. “Eat,” she commanded, her other hand reaching down to stroke his thigh. He glared at Sasori and turned his nose up at the food, but she gripped his jaw and forced his mouth open to stuff the food in before she cast him to the ground and stood up to open her arms in welcome to Sasori while he coughed and spat the fish onto the floor.

“I try teaching him words, but he not smart,” she said after Sasori seemed to ask a question. “He is very beautiful, but a little old for me. I don’t want him anymore.”

“I’m not giving him to you anyway,” Sasori snapped, giving her a nasty look and going over to pull him to his feet.

“No, Sasori, please stay,” she implored with a purr in her voice as her ladies nodded in agreement.

“We can’t,” he said, keeping a firm grip on his arm as he pulled him in front of Feiyan. “Thank you for caring for him while I was busy.”

“Why did you leave me with her, un?” he demanded as soon as they were a few streets away from the house.

“Because I needed to consult with some witches,” Sasori replied. “She is the Master here, but she is my Made, so she must listen to me. You look as though she took care of you, but I didn’t like leaving you with her.”

“I didn’t like her! She was… She would…” he stopped walking, but Sasori continued so he had to keep moving, but didn’t continue. “I hate baths.”

“Really?” Sasori asked with interest, then grinned. “Why?”

“I smell funny now,” he finally muttered. Sasori made a noise that could have been a laugh and led him into a house that was much less grand than Feiyan’s, which was built with false windows so that the vampires were not bothered at all by the sun and richly decorated and impeccably clean. This one was dirty and used wood and cloth to block out the light and only had two rooms other than the large main space where a few of the humans were already there, cleaning out a hearth to light a fire.

Now that he was back with Sasori, who despite his nasty teeth and violent tendencies was far less intimidating than the adult vampire Feiyan, he reverted back to insisting on being taken home, but Sasori chose to ignore his demands as if he wasn’t speaking. In fact, he would barely speak to him at all if he tried to speak to him in something other than English or Chinese, which he insisted he learn. He countered this by banging on old pots and pans while singing loudly off key whenever the vampires were resting during the day, much to everyone’s annoyance. In an attempt to shut him up, Sasori had brought him a gift – a toy that looked like a spool with string called a _bandalore_ that he could wind up and cause to come back to him after tying a string to his finger. This distracted him for quite some time, practicing the motions Sasori had shown him, though he found excuses to ‘accidentally’ hit Sasori with it during the day when the creature was hiding from the sun and forced him to remain in his room.

Sasori finally snapped when he managed to strike him in the nose, and he tried to escape, but was dragged back by those invisible strands that forced his limbs to work against him. He struggled against them, trying to grab onto the walls and doors, but it was no use and soon he was in front of the vampire lounging luxuriously on his bed of blankets and pillows, glaring at one another.

“Let me go!” he growled, fighting hard against the grip he couldn’t see.

“Stay with me,” Sasori murmured, his voice sounding tired as it always did when the sun was up.

“No,” he said stubbornly. 

“Stay.”

“No.”

The creature growled at him, annoyed as always that he wasn’t as obedient as the others around him. He growled back, which made Sasori roll his eyes at him. “Why?” he asked.

It caught him off guard; he had never asked him why. “Because you made me come over,” he snapped, stamping his foot. “Why don’t you just ask?”

Sasori glared at him. “You always leave,” he huffed out.

“You force me to be here!” he growled, stamping his foot again. “I want to go outside. I never get to go outside, un! That lady wouldn’t let me go outside either!”

“Why?”

“I like being outside, why don’t you like being outside,” he shot back, fists clenched.

“I told you before. Vampires cannot go in the sun,” Sasori murmured, staring at him unblinkingly. He shifted uncomfortable, not understanding why he was staring. “We will burn, and die. We can only walk at night when the sun is gone.”

“I’d rather be dead,” he stated firmly, folding his arms.

A rough noise came from the redheaded monster that might have been a laugh. “What good would dying do? It would be better to live forever, unchanging.”

He scoffed. “ _That_ is stupid,” he countered. “Things that last forever are boring. What’s the point if you last forever, un?”

There was shifting behind him where the other vampires were resting that let him know that though Sasori was still staring at him, he was growing annoyed. They could always tell when their leader was growing angry and it made them nervous. He didn’t care. “You’re an idiot,” the vampire murmured, the laugh gone from his voice. “Things that don’t last are forgotten.”

“Even mountains change,” he stated, scrunching his face up in distaste. “Trees grow. If you don’t change, that’s just means you’re stuck, un. And useless. You’re not smart enough to be useful.”

Something invisible yanked his foot up, causing him to fall backwards with a painful knock on his head. He reached up to rub it, but something physical grabbed his ankle and dragged him onto the nest like bed before he realized what had happened. “You’re such a fool,” he hissed, his teeth sinking into his shoulder. He screamed at the pain, and The Monster laughed at him, purring happily as he drank his blood he loved so much. He paused ever so often, letting him breath, letting him whimper and try to crawl away, but he kept being pulled back. It had been a long time since The Monster had emerged to play with him like a cat toying with a mouse. He seemed to enjoy hearing him crying in the agony of his bite, petting his hair in an affectionate way as he sobbed, trying to breathe again. When he was finished torturing him, he used his chest as a pillow to rest and, slowly, the other vampires crawled into the room, drawn by the scent of blood and their master’s pleasure. Shivering in aching that remained, he tried to ignore the pressing of bodies that sought the comfort of the little monster.

“Please let me go,” he finally whimpered out, his voice raw and rough as sandpaper. “Please… just kill me.”

“Why would I do that?” Sasori murmured, his chin propped up to continue staring at him with his strange milky eyes. “I’m going to keep you forever. Unchanging forever. It will be beautiful.”

He cringed away from him in dislike, unable to muster the strength to scoff or shove anymore. “What’s beautiful about forever, hm?” he grunted out. “Things that are beautiful end. That’s what makes it pretty.”

Sasori made the laughing noise again. “What’s beautiful about things that end? They’re easily forgotten,” came the mocking response. “You think anyone back in your country will even remember that you exist? No one will remember you when you’re dead.”

The truth of his words stung, but another truth came to him almost instantly to his defense and he opened his eyes to look down at him and smirk because he knew it would piss him off. “ _You_ will remember me when I’m dead,” he sneered, knowing it was true. He knew it because the other vampires always drank the blood of several humans, sometimes going out at night to find other entertainment when their humans were too weak to be bitten again. Sasori only ever fed from him. Sasori glared at him, furious at the truth he gave him and bit his chest one more time giving him yet another wave of poisonous agony shooting through his body.

He ran away again that night after Sasori rose and left him unceremoniously on his bed as he dressed and walked out into the night. A vampire and a human had come to him after Sasori departed, bringing him food and clothes of a fabric he had never worn before, light and soft. He wanted to shove them away, but wasn’t strong enough as they bathed him, though less gently than Feiyan’s maidservants had, and dressed him again. He ate the food and, after the vampire and human left him with a new pair of shoes standing next to the bed, climbed up to the blocked window and crawled out of it, slipping barefoot down the streets, limping away from his prison.

Freedom was short lived. It wasn’t Sasori, but one of the other vampires who found him this time, catching him trying to sneak back to the ships to try to find a way back home. They had more patience than Sasori did, hurrying him back to the building while gently shushing his protesting shouts. They brought him food and fruits he had never tasted before, stuffed buns, hard candies, and little bowls of what he thought was a butterfly cocoon, but ended up being something sweet. They begged him to stop fighting them, begged him to pick his battles and not fight their Maker anymore. He responded by dumping the food out on Sasori’s bed and sat in the corner with the sweet things, glaring at all of them until Sasori returned just before the sun came up and he tried to crawl into one of the smaller unused rooms, but he could still hear the little vampire demanding what had happened. His bed was a mess and he had smelled his human outside.

“Why did you throw food on my bed?” Sasori demanded of him not long after finding him sitting in the pantry with the bean bun in his hand, trying to appear that he wasn’t hiding from the redhead.

“I didn’t want it, un,” he grunted. The vampire stared at him until he began shifting uncomfortably. “Because I don’t want to be here,” he answered.

“Why?”

“Why?” he repeated with a cry, throwing the rest of his bun at him – the other dodged it effortlessly. “I hate you! I don’t want to be here! I want to go home, un!” He leapt to his feet, wishing he had something else to throw. “You dragged me here! You made me stay with that vampire! You’re keeping me prisoner! You won’t even tell me my name! I know you know it!”

Sasori simply looked at him, eyes narrowed just slightly, but didn’t argue with him. “You ran away again,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “My Made had to go after you because they knew they would have been punished if you’d gotten away again.”

“So?”

“When you run away, it is their fault for not watching you,” he said, head tilting slightly to the side. “Do you want them to get into trouble?”

“I don’t care, un,” he sneered.

Sasori stared at him in the same manner after he had murdered the old man in the mountains far away. “Deidara.”

“What?”

“That’s your name.”

Now it was his turn to stare. Sasori had told him that nearly a year of constant trauma might have caused him to forget his human name, but he knew, at least, that the word he had spoken was entirely foreign to him. “That’s not my name,” he said, confused now.

“It is your name,” Sasori insisted, looking rather pleased about something. “I told you, I would choose a better name for you. Deidara.”

“That’s not my name,” he repeated, feeling anger rising like boiling water.

“It is now,” the vampire replied, still looking pleased. “I think it suits you.”

“I want to know _my_ name,” he snapped, rising to his feet.

“It’s Deidara.”

“My real name!” he shouted.

“Perhaps I’ve forgotten it,” Sasori mused, seeming to relish in this thing he could hold over him.

“You’re lying! You said it was written on those things the doctors would write, un!” he shouted again, taking a step closer. “I want to know my real name! Not a stupid fake name!”

“These?” Sasori asked, pulling out of his pocket a carefully folded bunch of papers. He stared at them, recognizing the emblem stamped on the top of the visible page. Turning, Sasori walked out of the pantry and he followed after the vampire as he walked to the fire pit that warmed the room and tossed the papers into the fire. “It’s gone. Your name is Deidara.”

“No!” he cried, flinging himself down on the floor desperate to grab at the frail pieces of paper that caught fire so easily. The other humans who had been preparing a meal over the fire, though their eyes had been watching the pantry hurriedly pulled him to safety as he nearly crawled into the fire in his need to reach the proof of who he had been. He clutched the precious piece he had saved, staring at the print and writing that graced the page in elegant script and used his bare hands to staunch the flames on it, but he had never learned his letters and couldn’t decipher their meaning or even if it was the information he wanted so badly.

Sasori walked up next to him and swiped the paper out of his hand, crumbling it up and tossing it back into the flames that ate it hungrily. “It doesn’t exist anymore. Your name is Deidara,” he repeated heartlessly and went back to relax on his own cushions to watch them all sitting awkwardly in the silence that followed, the vampires uncaring and the humans pretending they didn’t see or hear the frustrated sobbing of a lost boy so far away from home.


	2. The Human Years - Part 2

The sky was a creamy pink above him, pushing away the darkness that had hung over the new strange land. Everywhere he went, people stared at him. He had never experienced the feeling of being caught in the light of so many gazes, but he understood it a little. Everyone here had dark hair and dark eyes and his golden head, still shiny from the abuse it had received under the hands of Feiyan’s maidservants stood out like a sore thumb. His mood couldn’t lift with the sun that day, though he watched it as he always did when he was able to do so. His heart still felt crushed by the destruction of the last link that tied him outside of this new world of monsters.

The normal people who lived with the other vampires had tried to get him to eat the night before, tempting him with stew they had made, but he refused and regretted it now. He had been angry at everyone for their nods of understanding and agreement when Sasori had instructed them to call him by the name he had invented for him and had snuck out as soon as the vampires who were supposed to be keeping an eye on him went to their spaces to rest for the day, knowing they couldn’t follow him. He didn’t know where he wanted to go, where he could go, what he should do. He was so far away from home, but all he knew was that he needed to get away from them all.

A spark caught his eye and he turned to watch a shop keeper holding a small stick that sparkled as it burned down the stick, not like fire but a continually flaring spark. Rushing over, he stared at it in wonder and delight as the man looked at him, giving a warning gesture for him to stay back. 

“You like?” the man asked in poor English when he had crouched down to watch it finally sputter out. He nodded eagerly and the man used a flint to light a new stick, handing it over to him and smiled as he took it and moved it around, delighting in how the lights burned in his eyes and no matter how hard he swung it, it didn’t go out until it reached the end of the stick and sputtered out. The man chuckled quietly and went back into his open air shop. 

He could see barrels of products with the strange symbols he took to be the writing system of the country. One was opened and he noticed the black powder that the miners had used to create the explosion like thunder that had fascinated him so. He looked at the symbols on the barrels, unable to read them, then turned to the man, pointing at the barrel. “Boom?” he asked, making a gesture to go along with it so he would understand. The man nodded, coming over to move him away from the barrel then crossed his arms to indicate he was not allowed to touch it.

Annoyed, he left the shop, but hung around to keep an eye on it, determined to get some for himself. He had no money on him, but he wasn’t beyond stealing some of it. The idea of causing another explosion made him shiver in anticipation. The idea of making that explosion happen in Sasori’s face caused a manic little giggle to bubble out of him. While he waited, he stole a few pieces of vegetables from a nearby market stand but returned as quickly as possible to watch the store. When the man was pouring over a long stack of papers, he snuck back inside and stuffed his pockets with handfuls of tubes from a crate with a picture of something firing out of the end, and a handful of the sparkle sticks before he slipped outside and ran headlong into Sasori.

“I th—thought you couldn’t come outside during the day,” he stammered, his fear spiking, but Sasori only grabbed the back of his shirt and began dragging him along back to the house, looking tired and annoyed.

“No, I can,” Sasori stated, giving him a shove to make him walk in front of him. “It is just not comfortable. Why did you run away again, Deidara?”

“That’s not my name, un!” he hissed angrily, trying to stop and turn to him, but Sasori flicked his fingers and he continued to walk against his will. “If you won’t tell me my real name, I’ll think of something better!”

“Deidara is a better name,” Sasori stated, giving him a prod in the back to get him walking on his own again. “You’re going to stay with me today.”

“I don’t want to. How did you even find me, un?” he growled, digging his heels in the ground, but his feet rose and he took steps against his will. “Stop it! Stop controlling me with magic!”

“I told you already, it’s not magic,” Sasori scoffed. “It’s just something I can do. And, I could smell you. I can always find you by smell.” They walked into the room and Sasori glared at the humans who cowered against their vampires. “Stop allowing him to run away,” he said to the room at large, gripping his arm and leading him to his own bed where he flopped down after tugging off the jacket he had stuffed with explosives, dragging him down with him. “They caught him,” he murmured after settling down against him as if they were two kittens curling up together. “You’re safe now.”

“What?” he asked in confusion, eyes on the jacket.

“The witch that tried to kill you. The other witches caught up with him and they’ve killed him. He won’t try to kill you anymore,” Sasori said, closing his eyes.

“So I can go home now, un?”

“No, Deidara,” Sasori murmured, reaching out to run his fingers through his hair. “I like how your hair feels now. You should wash and brush it like Feiyan did.” He shuddered at the thought of the women forcing him to bathe. “What did you steal from that store?”

He jumped guiltily and shifted. “I didn’t ste—”

“I saw you.”

Hunching his shoulders, he folded his arms which was difficult because Sasori had gone back to holding him like he was a toy. “Sparkle sticks,” he muttered. There was a silence behind him that felt confused, so he plodded on so he wouldn’t hear that it was a half-truth. “They’re little sticks that sparkle when they catch fire.”

“I want to see,” Sasori stated, sitting up. “How does it work?”

He stared at the eagerly curious expression on the vampire’s face, hating the way he was able to hide his monstrous self and look like a boy that could be his friend. “I need to light them…”

Sasori stood up and went into the main room at once, throwing himself down in front of the fire, looking at him expectantly. He shifted nervously, picking up the jacket and barrel he had put down and entered the main room where the eyes of all the vampires and humans were on him. Out of his pocket, he pulled out a handful of the sparklers and set down the small barrel precariously close to the fire that burned all day to warm the house. He stuck one of the sparklers into the fire so that it burst to life, earning a collective ‘oooh’ from his adult audience. Those who were able came closer and Sasori eagerly held out his hand to take the stick from him and wave it around a little.

“It’s like a _hanabi_ you can hold,” he said with a childish grin.

He smiled a little, watching the sparkle stick burn and lit another one for a woman that came closer curiously and one for himself. His heart sparked as happily as the stick in his hand, but the little barrel perched on the stone floor by the fire kept drawing his eyes. Sasori demanded for another when his went out and he obliged then pulled out one of the longer tubed to look at. He could tell where it was supposed to be held and he pulled out the others and held them tight as he lit the ends. The others looked on with interest as the ends sparked, but confused as he pointed one bunch at Sasori and the barrel, and the other in the direction of the others. The result was chaos as the tubes in his hand shot their brightly colored explosions at the onlookers. He had a brief sight of Sasori’s pure shocked expression as he brought his arms up to protect his face before the lights blinded him and he threw the sticks, still shooting bursts of energy at the barrel and turned and ran for the door.

“Deidara!” he heard Sasori shout angrily, but he was out the door before his witch strings could catch him and suddenly there was a huge boom as the little barrel exploded with enough force that part of the house collapsed and he was flung to the stone street.

“Wow,” he gasped, staring up at the house with a giggle escaping his lips as muffled screams came from inside the house and from those in immediate vicinity. Scrambling to his feet, he ran down the street laughing to himself at the mayhem he had caused. He couldn’t hope that the blast had killed something as evil as Sasori, so he tried to put as much distance between himself and the house.

He ran until his legs hurt and he didn’t know where he was. He had never been in a city before and found the way the houses and buildings seemed to loom over him to block the sky unnerving. He had never gotten so far in his previous escapes. He thought of his family’s little cottage that was close enough to walk to the market quickly, but also close enough to the woods that he could sneak away instead of going to lessons and felt suddenly sad. He didn’t know how he would get back to his home. He didn’t even know where his home was. He had never seen a map big enough to show the world before, but he couldn’t let Sasori find him again. His feet slowed until he stopped all together. Sasori had said he could find him by smell. Maybe vampires were like dogs… So, he had to get rid of his smell. Grimacing, he turned down a side street, no longer stepping over the accumulated filth on the sides of the road left by animals and shop keepers until he finally noticed a metal grate that covered up a stone tunnel below. There was no one around to watch him as he tugged and pulled with his thin arms that used to be so strong from climbing trees until it finally came free enough for him to slip inside. The water below was stagnant and smelled terribly, but that was the point, he reasoned with himself, gagging as he crawled into the darkness. It was nearly pitch black but for the other grates that dotted the tunnel, but he crawled on, pausing to finally give into the smell and vomit up the few vegetables he had eaten earlier. Still he crawled on until the floor gave out from below his hands and he fell headlong into a whole that had opened out, splashing down into a new, larger tunnel. He scrambled to his feet, happy the water wasn’t so deep and opened his eyes as wide as he could, but the darkness was too deep. He heard skittering noises and felt a wave of panic washing over him, thinking of rats that lived down here too and finally found the wall, slimy and cold. He felt around until he found another opening where the water drained and bent low to crawl in that one.

There was no time down here. The only thought that allowed him to continue placing one hand in front of the other to crawl through the waste was to put as much distance he could between Sasori and himself. He was cold and starving and weak, but he had to keep going. If a tunnel seemed to open into sunshine and the smell of the sea came to him, he turned away, terrified that the open air would give The Monster a taste of his scent. He slept no more than a doze at a time, when he found a tunnel that was dryer than most. His sense of direction was gone, and his mind was mocking him, telling him he was going in circles, but the darkness began to confuse him and his hunger to delude him into believing that perhaps he was crawling all the way back home. His eyes saw nothing in the deepest black of the tunnel and he crawled like a slimy blind thing until his weak limbs could give him no more and he collapsed, too cold to even shiver and he hoped that he would die and be free of this horror story he had fallen into.

He was sitting on the floor in front of a crackling fire. His stomach was full, and he was listening to a story while his mother and grandmother’s needles flashed in the light. Grandmother was telling him a story of a giant made of trees that lived in the woods of the far north where the snow never melts. Grandmother always told the best stories, though father always tutted quietly because he thought them to be too scary for a young boy. Mother would smile and say she heard the same stories and was alright and the discussion ended like a repeated play recital.

“Grandmother,” he said quietly, resting his chin on her leg. He didn’t care that he was growing too old for this sort of action and grandmother never stopped him.

“Yes, my dear?” she asked, putting her needles down on her lap and smiled at him.

“What’s my name?”

“Your name?” she gave a dry, crinkled laugh and reached out to gently rub his cheek. “You silly boy, have you forgotten?”

“Yeah,” he said sadly, hugging her leg tightly, but something was wrong. 

Her legs weren’t covered in the warm blanket, but felt like she was hiding a person under there. He blinked and the fire was gone. His home was gone. And when he looked up at her, his heart leapt in fear for he wasn’t hugging his grandmother, but The Monster, who smiled and said softly, “your name is Deidara.”

“No!”

He woke with a start, flailing his limbs, but only slammed them into hard things that hurt him and instead, he tried to push the creature holding him away, sobbing helplessly in frustration and misery. How had he found him? The Monster made soft shushing sounds, trying to sooth him as he rubbed something against his skin, softly, but firmly. “I found you,” he heard Sasori murmuring, holding him gently as if he was terrified the other would break. “Why do you keep running away? I thought I lost you… I was so worried I lost you.”

They were sitting in a smooth stone room, much less grand than the bathing room in Feiyan’s, but the water was pumped into a stone bath that heated the sweet smelling water The Monster was using to clean the sewage from his skin and hair. Every time he raised the energy to struggle, The Monster paused, cradling him like a fussing, but treasured child, trying to sooth his panic. It felt strange to be held by someone smaller than him. When a clean spot finally emerged from sludge, he felt The Monster press his nose against it and breathe the smell of him in. He cringed, fearing the teeth that would come, but they didn’t. The Monster continued to clean him until the water ran clear and they lay at the bottom of an empty bathing tub, two naked youths pressed against one another. He felt Sasori’s mouth on his neck and shuddered, but he didn’t bite him. The Monster preened at the smell of his panic, but he didn’t bite him. He wanted to though. Even in his weakened state, he could feel it. A sharp pain suddenly made the muscles of his arm tense and he whimpered. Sasori had cut his arm with a knife, bringing the limb to his mouth to drink his blood instead of biting him. It hurt less than his teeth and he wondered if he thought this was a kindness.

“No,” he said, his voice so weak the words barely escaped his lips.

“Hm?” Sasori lift his head from his arm, the wound healed as the boy licked his lips clean of his blood.

“I won’t stay,” he stated as firmly as he could manage. “I will... always run away, un…”

“Not anymore,” the boy murmured, still holding him with intense gentleness, using his own teeth to tear into his hard, cold skin and pushed the wound into his mouth. The clarity and life the blood gave him made him squirm, trying to escape again as the emotions of the other swept through him. The loss of one of his followers at his trick, the terror as he searched for Deidara through the city, through the ships, terrified he wouldn’t be able to find him, to taste him again. The loss of his Made was nothing to the loss of this precious boy. He would never let him go. He wanted to feed on him so badly.

“No,” he whimpered, trying to push the other away. “Don’t bite me, un.”

“I won’t,” the other boy promised, continuing to clean his filthy body until the water finally ran clear again. His body shivered as it slowly began to warm after being so cold, his vision was fading in and out as he lost and gain consciousness. Sasori seemed anxious about his condition, giving him more and more of his blood to keep him conscious. When he regained it again, they had moved from the bathroom to a bed and Sasori was using his magic to make his body move like a broken marionette, hanging onto Sasori as if it was his only lifeline as their naked, cold bodies were pressed together. He could feel himself growing cold, fading away. He whimpered out for help, for someone to save him as he felt as though he was sliding under water.

Waking up was difficult. He felt himself becoming more aware of his body with each passing hour, or perhaps it was every minute, or perhaps every second was lasting an hour. His muscles felt tight and cold, his bones felt like sand as he shifted, trying to crawl out of what felt like the ground. Was something on top of him crushing down to the ground? His stomach screamed with more hunger than he ever felt in his life. He whined, the noise sounding animalistic to his ears and he felt something shifting against his body. He breathed in and the smells of the space around him. Old, dusty blankets, rotting wood and plaster, the jasmine soap that lingered on his skin and something else. Something that smelled sharply of death, but sweetened by the scent of wood and heated sand that drew him in and eased the panic that had been rising from the difficulty of moving. He was so hungry. He needed to eat. He couldn’t outlast this hunger, couldn’t ignore it as he did in the past. He needed to eat something. Anything. He’d eat dirt if it would settle his hunger down.

“That’s not what you want,” came a soft voice in his ear as he tried to grab anything in reach. Gently, he was lifted into a sitting position. It was Sasori who smelled so comforting, though he didn’t understand why it was so. He held him gently, the smile on his lips was soft as well, his hand reaching up to push his hair off his face. “Bite,” he ordered, tilting his head to the side to expose his neck.

He stared, the muscle of his neck coming into sharp focus as it was offered. He was so hungry, but he vaguely remembered the horrors of the times Sasori gave him his blood. The horrors were nothing compared to the hunger he felt. Sasori watched him a moment, then reached up to tangle his fingers in his hair to guide his face closer, not using his magic as usual. The hunger welled up more than he could resist and he sank his teeth into Sasori’s flesh. His teeth were sharp now, sinking easily into the skin that had been strong as stone and had hurt his hands when he fought him. The blood that filled his mouth saturated his craving for food and he clung to the smaller body tighter, drinking to attempt to state his hunger. As he drank, he felt Sasori in his mind, growing even closer than he seemed in his arms and panicked, pulling away from him.

“No,” came the order, Sasori’s grip tightening on his arms. “You need to feed more.”

“Get out of my head,” he insisted, unhappy that his panic leaked into his voice.

“I can’t,” Sasori murmured, pulling him closer again. The smell of the blood filled his nose and he obediently sank his new teeth into his skin again, groaning softly as his hunger slowly ebbed away. “I will always be there in your mind.”

“What did you do to me?” he whimpered, wanting to stop drinking his blood, but every time his stopped his hunger overwhelmed him again. He asked, but he already knew. He could taste it in Sasori’s blood, Sasori had taken his human body and changed it into the monster he was. Sasori the Monster, his new Maker. Fury rose in him and he tried to shove the boy away from him, but his Maker held him closer. He tasted in his blood how different he was from the other humans Sasori had ever fed on. He tasted how much he felt he needed his blood, again how terrified he had been when he couldn’t find him for days and, somewhere distantly in his blood, he knew Sasori desired someone who wouldn’t simply obey him, who would play with him, and challenge him. A playmate and toy. He could taste the depth of the years Sasori had prowled the world, making vampires and casting them aside. Sasori would never, ever dispose of him.

“Deidara,” the creature murmured in his ear, anger rose again, but he was so hungry. “Deidara… Deidara… Now I have you, forever.” He felt him press his nose against the curve of his own neck and cringed, knowing he was going to bite him too. “You can never leave me again.”

His teeth sunk into the meat of his flesh for just a moment before he was suddenly flung halfway across the room. The sudden lack of blood staunching his hunger made him dizzy as he sat up and stared at Sasori on his hands and knees on the floor, gagging and vomiting on the floor. He didn’t need to breathe but he was gasping for breath as he tried to expel the blood he had tried to drink. The honey brown eyes stared at him with childlike panic; he didn’t know Sasori could make such a face as his new Maker sat up and held his hands out towards him like he used to reach out to his parents and the pathetic whimper made him consider answering the unspoken beg. His own eyes wide and confused, he crawled over to him and allowed him to try feeding from him again and again, but each time he reacted as if he tried to drink a cocktail of acid and glass. Sasori made a noise that sounded like he was sobbing in frustration, clutching his hair as if he would pull it out as he curled up in his lap seeking comfort from the pain and confusion.

He didn’t know what to do, staying in the room because he was so hungry and Sasori was the only source of blood available to him. With Sasori so distressed, he couldn’t force himself to bite him again, but he was so hungry that he would whine at him until Sasori held out his arm to give him a few mouthfuls while Sasori wallowed in his own misery. When the sun began to climb, he began to feel as if he was drowning, his chest no longer capable of intaking the breath his body needed. The world turned grey as if he was about to faint, but his awareness didn’t leave him. The world had died like his body that couldn’t even react to his panicking.

“Sasori,” he whimpered out, seeking comfort from anything and knowing, without knowing why, that his Maker was a source of comfort to him no matter what he had done to him. Sasori reached out and touched his face for a moment before finally moving to rest against him, the skin on skin contact of their nakedness seemed to warm his suddenly cold body. “What’s happening?” It hurt to speak.

 _‘We cannot bare the sun,’_ came a soft voice from nowhere, riddled with anguish. That presence of Sasori in the back of his mind grew just slightly and he fought it, pressing back against it, but he realized that the voice came from that presence. _‘We can speak like this… it will take practice for you, but if you wish… just… reach for me and send me a thought and I can hear you… It will be easier.’_ In response, he imagined putting up a wall between himself and Sasori, shoving and kicking at that presence to get him as far away from his mind as he could. _‘Deidara, stop it.’_ He didn’t. _‘Enough,’_ Sasori’s voice growled, sinking his teeth into his chest as punishment, but as soon as the blood touched his tongue, he began choking and gagging again, retching over the side of the bed.

“Why is this happening?” Sasori coughed out rhetorically with a soft whine. He pounded his fists into the bed, then looked over at him, body dead on the bed. “I can’t see you anymore…” he murmured, reaching out to touch his cheek. His eyes were no longer brown, but milky like an old blind man. “You were so clear, but now…” He pressed his head against his chest as if in grief as the sun continued to climb high in the sky and the force of it pressing on the building felt like the building itself was crushing down on his body, even after Sasori finally shifted to the bed next to him.

Hours later when the sun finally went down, he got up and began to pace around the room, shaking his hands to try and rid himself of the tingling feelings his muscles had. He wanted to run, he wanted to do… something. Anything. And he was hungry again. So, so hungry. He looked at Sasori, still on the bed with no apparently intention of getting up. He looked at the door, tilting his nose up as he took a breath and smelled… a human. Another human body… many human bodies. The smell of… food. He swallowed, taking another breath, inhaling deeply through his nose. It would make stave off his crippling hunger.

“Deidara,” Sasori called to him, not looking at him. “Don’t go out that door.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that you can’t keep me, un!” he snapped, the animalistic growl in his voice surprising him, but he ignored it. “And that’s not my name!”

“It is now, Deidara,” Sasori said, rolling onto his side to give him his back with his arms folded tightly. “Stay in the room.”

“No!” he shouted, storming to the door, but suddenly his legs propelled him into the door and he couldn’t come up fast enough to stop his face slamming into the door and he began walking back towards the bed. “Stop it! Stop it, Sasori!”

“You won’t be able to control your hunger, Deidara,” Sasori said after a moment of silence after he was forced to sit down on the bed. “You will kill someone and expose us all.”

“That’s not my name!” he yelled, banging his fist down on Sasori’s back. For once, he didn’t hurt his hands, but Sasori didn’t react to the strike. “I’m so hungry,” he whimpered, then glared as Sasori held out his arm without looking at him. “No! Not you!” he shoved him away and when Sasori stopped him from leaving the bed, he started kicking and hitting him until Sasori finally rolled over and kicked him onto the floor.

Unable to contain his hunger, he finally crawled back to the unnaturally subdued Sasori to feed from him again. The sun came up again and he was forced to die again, miserable and filled with the blood that gave him enough understanding of his new Maker that he couldn’t bring himself to be furious with him.

When the sun set again, resisting the smelled outside the door became more and more difficult. He had been able to smell them all day and his hunger wasn’t satisfied by Sasori’s blood. The vampire tried to feed on him one more time with the same reaction as before and when he recovered he stood and went over to a bag on the ground and pulled out clean clothes to pull on and threw a set at him. He dressed, wondering what he was going to do to him, but the redhead gave him a once over then heaved a sigh and told him to follow him. The smells of the city were overwhelming when they stepped outside. All the bodies. The food. The fish. The animals. The people. The blood. When he began to hyperventilate from trying to smell everything, hungry as he was, Sasori finally stopped and looked at him.

“Vampires do not have to breathe,” he told him, sighing again. “Holding your breath will make it better.”

“I hate you,” he growled at him, turning to watch a man in a business suit walking down an alleyway. He smelled of meat, something fermented, and some other things he couldn’t distinguish. He could smell his sweat, and hear the beating of his heart pushing blood through his body. He tasted something strange and a little sweet on his tongue he didn’t know what it was. “I’m hungry,” he whined. “Can we get some dumplings?”

“No.”

“Why not? Noodles? I like noodles.”

“No.”

“Why?” he demanded, giving Sasori a shove.

Sasori stopped and finally turned to him and gave him a hard look. “I told you before, don’t you listen when I talk?” he demanded venomously. “You’re a vampire. We can’t eat human food.”

He stared at him, the horror of what he was saying sinking in. “I can’t eat cheese anymore, un?” he asked in a mortified whisper.

“You can’t eat anything anymore.”

“What about sausage?”

“That falls under the category of ‘anything’.”

“Pancakes?” he asked desperately.

“Do you not understand the word ‘anything’?” Sasori scowled at him, then turned and kept walking. “Come.”

“Where are we going, un?”

“Back to give you to Feiyan.”

“Why?” It was his turn to scowl.

“So she can take care of you,” Sasori muttered, but his ears could pick it up clearly.

“I can take care of myself,” he sneered.

“Yeah, sure you can,” Sasori mumbled. “She’s going to teach you how to control your hunger and feed without killing anyone.”

“Too lazy?” he sneered again.

Sasori stopped again and looked over at his direction, his eyes drifting to a place on his chest that made him cringe involuntarily. Sasori loved to bite him there. “I don’t want to be near you right now,” he said clenching his fists tightly and turned again to keep walking. “I can’t even… breathe around you.”

“What?” he scoffed, then sniffed his shoulder. “Do I stink?”

“No,” the other replied in a much softer voice. “You smell as wonderful as ever.”

He sniffed himself again, but didn’t really think he smelled much at all, too distorted by the onslaught of millions of other smells around him. The only thing he could very clearly smell was the smell of hot sand and finely cut wood that was coming from Sasori. Sasori smelled of himself and Maker, a source of comfort he didn’t understand why he was feeling. He didn’t understand the trust that feeling, just as he didn’t understand the sudden hurtfulness that overwhelmed him at the knowledge that his Maker was giving him away. Especially to Feiyan.

“I don’t like Feiyan,” he said in soft desperation. “She’s mean. And she… she’s very touchy.”

“I know,” Sasori stated, finally walking again and he followed after him. “There’s only women in her compound because she hates men, but she will teach you. She likes boys… and will do what I tell her.”

He made an unhappy noise, but followed after him. “Are you sure I can’t have noodles?” he asked as they stopped in front of the gate that barred the world from the monsters within. Sasori nodded and grabbed his arm to pull him unwillingly into the compound.

“Sasori!” Feiyan said happily, rising from her place where she was reading a book. “Oh,” she said in a less happy tone in English, “you bring bad, stupid boy.” She stopped in her advancement, tilting her head to the side and gave a sniff. “Oh…” she crooned a little happier. “ _Didi_ ,” she cried, taking his face to examine it and sighed. “He so beautiful, but too old, Sasori. Why bring him?”

“You’re going to teach him,” Sasori said, walking passed her and into the main area where the members of the compound gathered. Feiyan stared after him, then turned to gripped the back of his neck and dragged him as she followed their Maker. She said something in Chinese, but Sasori responded in English, “teach him control. Teach him…” he waved his hand to indicate the broad spectrum of things she could teach him. He sat down on a mount of large pillows and lounged against them with his back against the wall. “And send someone to bring the rest back here.”

Feiyan began arguing with Sasori in Chinese, gesturing to himself many times as she kept a firm grip on his neck because he kept trying to get away. The noise attracted her maidservants who all grinned happily when they saw him standing there, though one came over and grabbed a handful of his hair and said something that sounded like she was scolding him as she shook it. He glared at her, yanking it back. The movement caught Feiyan’s attention and she gave a slight sniff, she said something which Sasori responded with a sigh and got up. He looked confused until the maidservants grabbed him and dragged him after Sasori and he knew where they were going.

He didn’t fight when the women began to scrub them down, Sasori sitting compliant and looking even more childish with his shaggy red hair plastered against his face. Feiyan came into the room when the water around them ran clear and they moved to sit in the tub together and he noticed suddenly how Sasori wouldn’t look at him anymore. He didn’t think Sasori really enjoyed anything, but he did seem to like staring at him and hadn’t looked him in the face all night.

“Sasorizi,” Feiyan said quietly, her chin tilted down so she was looking at them through her eye lashes. She said something in Chinese and he ignored her, sinking lower into the flower infused water. “What is wrong, Sasori?” she asked in English. He looked at her, then over at Sasori curiously. “You so… sulky today.”

Sasori blew bubbles under the water then sat up a little. “Something is wrong,” he said to the petal in front of him. “Deidara’s blood hurt when I tried to feed on him.”

“What is wrong?” Feiyan asked from where she was sitting away from the wet floor.

“I just said,” he snapped.

The vampire’s expression blank. “I no understand,” she said after a long silence.

“It didn’t burn me before,” Sasori growled.

“No,” she said, waving her hand casually.

Sasori made a sound of irritation and gave them both a side glare. “Why can I not feed from him anymore?” he asked in a slow voice as if he thought Feiyan was stupid.

She looked a little surprise, glancing at Deidara, then at the remaining woman who was happily combing through his hair. “You… Made Deidara,” she said, her voice laced in confusion. “Makers cannot eat Made.”

“What?” Sasori’s expression was dumbstruck.

“You not know this?” she asked, her face lighting up in amusement. “Sasori, you so old, you not know this? Makers cannot do. You Make me, you no feed from me. Deidara now just like me. Fah!” she gave a light titter. “No, not me. He is too small, not strong, very stupid. He _didi_ now… You not know this?”

Sasori glared at her and sunk back into the water. He could see how his fists were clenched under the water, though his face went still and expressionless. He felt compelled to break the silence, feeling a rush of pity for Sasori, but didn’t know what to say. Deidara knew how much Sasori enjoyed the taste of his blood, tasted in Sasori’s blood the agony when he had tried to bite him again. Trying not to disturb the water to give away what he was doing, Deidara slid his fingers through the water and touched Sasori’s leg. The touch made that link to Sasori in his mind suddenly very strong and he could … feel the turmoil he was hiding. Sasori allowed the touch for several long seconds before his hand flew out of the water and slapped his chin so hard his head snapped back.

“Ow!” he cried, holding his chin and scrambled to get out of the tub and away from Sasori. “Why did you do that, un!” The vampire who had been combing his hair followed him and patiently began to dry his hair and braided it. He was surprised when the final tied end thumped the middle of his back and reached back to feel how long his hair had gotten.

“He eat?” Feiyan asked, gesturing at him.

“Just from me,” Sasori said, turning in the tub to give them all his back.

“Aye! Sasori, why you like this today? He attack everyone!” she scoffed, throwing her hands up. “You want me to teach, fah! He stupid, how I teach?”

“You’ve Made your own before,” Sasori said to the back wall.

“He your Made!” she cried. “Why so mad? You like his blood so much, now you act like child?” Sasori said nothing and she turned to look at him in dislike where the maidservants were dressing him in rich colored clothes that were soft and comfortable. He shook his head when she held out shoes. He didn’t like shoes. The woman started to insist, but Feiyan stood up and grabbed him by the ear and began dragging him out into the hallway. He protested and tried to fight her, but she kept her grip firm and walked him into a kitchen where a few women were working. She spoke to them for a few moments then gestured with a finger for him to go with the small, thin faced women who wiped her hands on her apron. He obeyed, looking around the kitchen hopefully for something like noodles, but didn’t see anything that resembled the food he had eaten during his stay. The woman opened a door and he stopped short, staring at the man tied to a chair just inside the closet like space. He was pale and seemed to be asleep or unconscious, there were red marks all over his naked body that reminded him of the way injuries looked after Sasori had given him his blood that had sped up his healing.

He turned to look at the woman, recognizing the scent of vampire on her, in confusion, both at the man and the hunger that rose so strongly in him. Behind them, Feiyan was approaching, her feet making a light tapping noise against the polished stone floor which surprised him a little because he had never seen her wear shoes before. “You must feed or you turn beast,” she told him, her expression making it clear that she did not enjoy the task she had been given, but obeying Sasori as his other followers had. “You take only little and stop. We no hurt when we feed, so learn.”

“Deidara!” she snapped impatiently when he just stared at her. “Feed, now!”

He felt something from her, something overbearing and strong. She felt like Sasori did when he was angry. Power. He wondered if that was what it was. The kitchen woman gave a soft shiver, her dark eyes eagerly staring at Feiyan. He glared at her, folding his arms tightly. “I don’t want him. I want dumplings, un,” he stated boldly.

“Dumplings?” Feiyan threw her head back and laughed nastily. “You not eat human food, stupid boy! You vampire.”

“He is dumpling,” the other vampire said, smiling in amusement. “You bite skin, but it is soup, not meat.”

Feiyan said something to her, a painted eyebrow raised in surprise and the woman responded with a coy smile that made the other woman laugh. “Bite him, boy,” she said, the power in her voice rising again.

“You’re not my boss,” he said, crossed arms clenching tighter. Her eyes narrowed at him and he felt that power flare again and he felt as if he needed to grit his teeth to keep his footing, but he did not want to back down from her.

“Ah, Feiyan,” the woman said, reaching out to touch her angry mistress. “Deidara is a little boy, he doesn’t understand politics.” They both looked at her, him annoyed at being called a little boy, her in exasperation. Feiyan stepped through the door and made a swipe with her hand that caused the man to wake up with a yell of pain. Her nails had sliced a long, deep line from his shoulder to his neck.

The smell hit him like a slap to the face, that sweet taste filling his mouth again and he realized it was coming from his teeth. Before he could even ask what it was, Feiyan had shoved him into the tiny room. “I no want old boys,” she snapped. “You learn to feed. No kill him and I let you out.” And she shut the door with a heavy snap.

The panic of being shut in began to rise, but so did his hunger. His eyes could see in the darkness that enclosed him and the whimpering man and as much as he hated what he had been turned into, he couldn’t stop himself climbing onto the man and clamping his mouth onto the wound. The blood poured into his mouth and he drank, feeling it rushing into his starving stomach and he was aware of the stench of arousal filling the tiny room as the man’s whimpers of pain became moans of pleasure. He pulled away in disgust, the smell unwanted and terribly familiar and drew him into memories of darkness and terror. There was blood on his lips and chin, and he found himself licking it, still hungry, but he turned and banged on the door, demanding to be let out. No one answered so he slammed into the door with as much force as he could muster and was surprised when he fell through it onto the stone floor. He heard a few people exclaiming in various degrees of annoyance and exasperation, but he was too busy looking back at the broken door hanging pathetically on its hinges.

“Whoa,” he murmured, looking down at his shoulder and seeing no mark. He was stronger than the door.

“You didn’t kill him,” the kitchen vampire said, kneeling next to him and gave him a pat on the head. “Good boy.”

“Why you break door, stupid boy?” Feiyan scoffed, folding her arms imperiously.

He glared at her, but then the other vampire handed him a bowl of something and he looked at it. He could tell it was blood from the smell, but the way it was cut into shapes and jiggled distracted him. “Treat for you for not killing him, good boy,” she said, patting him on the head. “We will try again tomorrow.”

Feiyan gave a scoff and said something snappish to the woman before she stalked out of the kitchen, gracefully kicking off her shoes before she stepped onto the polished wooden floor of the house and a servant girl came into the room and hurried to pick them up for her. He took the bowl when the vampire nudged him with it again and looked up at her curiously. “Feiyan likes being Sasori’s favorite,” she told him in a gentle voice, reaching out to run her fingers over his braided hair. “She is a little jealous. You go to Sasori before sun goes down.”

“He doesn’t want me, un,” he grumbled, sniffing the bowl again. It smelled delicious. And he wasn’t sure if he was comfortable with that. “He gave me to Feiyan.”

“Oh,” she crooned with heartfelt sympathy. “You need your Maker when you first turn. He knows this.”

“You speak English better then she does,” he commented, though he had been forced to learn English himself, but it seemed easy enough to pick up. Feiyan had commented that he was too stupid to learn Chinese, but he didn’t think he was; he just didn’t want to learn from her.

“I learned from foreign sailors,” she said, smirking at him. “They think like women like me are exotic, so I learn, and I feed.”

He made a small noise of partial understanding, then she was giving him a light push towards the door. He followed Feiyan’s path, confused by the way he could nearly see with his nose and wondered if this was how dogs felt. Reaching into the bowl, he picked up the little shape and looked at it, watching it wiggle with a little giggle. He had never seen food wiggle before and popped it into his mouth. He liked the texture it had on his tongue and the way it squelched when he chewed it and slid down his throat. It was some sort of blood and sugar, but didn’t fully sate the nagging hunger that still plagued him. A candied treat. He grinned, picking up another piece as he entered the room where Sasori lounged staring at the wall while Feiyan was speaking to him in Chinese, switching from speaking coaxing to angry sounds. When she noticed him, she scoffed and went to sit in another area and picked up her book and pretended that the two of them didn’t exist. When he came closer, Sasori stiffened and tightened his folded arms, but he kept coming and sat down next to him. He picked up another piece of blood, watching it jiggle before he sucked it down. Shifting slightly, he held the bowl up to Sasori, who glared at it until he wiggled the bowl to make the pieces jiggle. The glare softened in interest and he reached over to pick one up and ate it before giving him his back.

He hated Sasori, he reminded himself as he stared at the red head still slightly damp from his bath. He tortured him, stole him from his home, but… Deidara hunched his shoulders, not liking the feeling of being abandoned and knowing why Sasori was so upset. He had tasted it in his blood when he had drunk it so hungrily. “It’s not my fault,” he whispered quietly, and inched closer and turned so he had his back against the other. He picked up a piece of the treat and played with it between his fingers before putting it in his mouth. The bowl was empty when the sun began to rise. Feiyan had left them to hide away and Sasori hadn’t moved. This pain… he would never get used to it. A whimper swelled in his throat as he felt his bones beginning to die, but after several long and painful minutes, Sasori shifted enough to drape his arm over his chest with his fingers in his hair. Somehow the touch made the painful daytime dying lessen.

“Why does it hurt so much?” he whimpered.

“Stop talking,” came the reply. “It will hurt to draw in breath and I am not speaking to you.”

Much like when he had been here as a human, his time was highly regulated. He could no longer move during the day, but spent it in agony except when Sasori allowed him to snuggle up against him. The touch of the other made the daytime a little more bearable, though he didn’t understand why that was and Sasori wasn’t offering any help. At night, Feiyan tried to teach him to feed safely from humans that were brought in for the vampires living there, but he was growing less and less open to listening to her and obeying the demands put forth on her. He began to drain the humans just to watch her growing angry when he didn’t listen for her to stop, ignoring the orgasms the venom in his fangs caused though he hated the way the smell reminded him of the asylum. Feiyan grew more and more furious with him, which only pleased him more. Bored inside the compound, he snuck out at night to explore and look for something fun to do, but after being trapped in a cellar during the day, terrified that someone would find him and the pain of the day worse from being alone, he was more careful to return before the sun rose. These outings infuriated the head vampire even more because she insisted that he would kill someone and expose them all, so he left a corpse on the table for them all to find. No matter how angry Feiyan became, Sasori wouldn’t respond to her and spent his time staring at the wall, not looking at anyone including the rest of his followers who often visited the compound, but didn’t stay. They were apprehensive around him at first – apparently, he had killed one of the vampires when the fireworks exploded in the house, but later seemed happy about having a new sibling, though Sasori had spoken for the first time in some time in days to remind them that they weren’t a family and were not siblings.

Deidara was sympathetic towards Sasori’s misery for a month, the tastes of his blood that Sasori gave him when he was allowed to spend the sun’s time with him gave him a steady understanding of the misery Sasori was feeling. A month went by and he finally lost patience with him. The redhead had spent nearly a year torturing him with his painful teeth every night and now he was sulking because he couldn’t continue to do so without getting hurt himself. He would sneak up on him and grabbed his leg to drag him off the pillows, ignoring his half-hearted insistence to be let go until he sank his teeth into his leg then bolted off before he could strike him. He taunted him and worked to infuriate Feiyan even more so that she would yell at Sasori to annoy him even more. Their Maker would grumble and glare whenever he pulled pranks on them all, but never left the room he had claimed for himself.

He was uncertain whether he was capable of retaining his hunger or if he was only killing the people he came across because it caused trouble for Feiyan. He suspected it was both because though he didn’t try to stop himself when Feiyan halfheartedly tried to teach him to feed properly, he purposefully drained the human given to him, but when he was out, he sometimes found himself stalking after someone without realizing it until he had dragged the person into a dark corner and savaged them until they moved no more and there was no one to taunt or anger. The only person he listened to was Tuyet, the vampire who was the head chef in the kitchen and came from a country she called Đại Việt – though she gave no details other than telling him it was across the sea, preparing special blood dishes for the house as well as meals for the human servants. Her method of motherly bribery encouraged him far more than Feiyan’s aggressive ones and he would poke his head into the kitchen as often as possible to see if she had a new candy for him to try and sometimes he would sneak up to Sasori’s languid form to share the treats. The redhead’s other vampires also taught him what Feiyan called ‘force of will’ and the others called ‘glamour’. It allowed vampires to make their victims obey them willingly or forget that they had been fed from. Deidara didn’t use it on his victims brought to the kitchens for him, but instead used it on the humans in the city when he went out so that they would give him things like toys and new clothes. Empowered with new strength, he no longer felt nervous about people staring at him because of his foreignness and walked with his head, which shone with the torture the maidservants inflicted on it, held high, relishing in the way people’s eyes followed him; he never had to allow someone to do anything to him that he didn’t want and that knowledge pleased him. He used his nose to find the shop that had he had stolen the explosives from and used the glamour to make the man teach him how to make the pieces and smuggle some back into the main house.

His best prank, in his opinion, was when he discovered that there was another Master vampire that lived in the city a few miles away. At night when he snuck out, he would stalk people in that city and leave bodies in their territory so that the Master would send envoys to stir trouble between the two Masters. Feiyan’s temper broke and she first tried to demand that Sasori take his charge and leave her place, but Sasori was her Maker and she couldn’t force him to do things like the others had to obey her. She then tried to attack Deidara, her intent to harm him more apparent than her usually outbursts of aggressive violence, but he had been ready for her and had been thinking for a long time about how the explosion and fire had been capable of killing some of Sasori’s other followers. His new life as a vampire had brought back some of himself from before the asylum, before Sasori, and he relished in her anger and taunted her attacks with the grace of a child playing a game of tag. The mouse believed herself to be the cat as she chased him into the trap he had set for her and the explosion she tripped ripped her body into pieces. The noise had left his ears ringing a little, but as he looked around at the walls and ceiling covered in the remains of the Master vampire who had been the last who had tortured him, he began to giggle softly until it grew into a full laugh of delight at the expressions of the household who had rushed to see and the soft wails of misery from the vampires Feiyan had Made herself.

He stopped laughing when Sasori stepped into the room, but couldn’t keep the delight from his face at what he had done. The other boy took the time to look around at the walls, then down at the floor. “Feiyan,” he began in a voice that was a little rough from disuse, “was the strongest vampire I ever made.”

“I hated her, un,” he stated, still relishing in what he had done. “No one can do things to me anymore. I’m strongest now, un!”

Sasori’s expression shifted a little. He was looking at him as if he were a bug, but a bug that he was growing fond of and found interesting. “Perhaps,” he replied, “but we should go now. You have caused an imbalance of power here and the vampires will be fighting for Feiyan’s position and you are not old enough to take her place. Go wash, then get your things, we are leaving.”

The order was for all of his vampires and Deidara found himself obeying the cool presence of his Maker and went into the bathing room to strip out of his bloody clothes and began to mimic the movements of the maidservants when they washed him. He had never had to bathe himself before and it wasn’t as easy as they made it seem and was growing frustrated when Tuyet walked into the room to watch him.

“Would you like some help?” she asked, watching him struggle with the task of washing his hair. “I am glad you killed Feiyan,” she added several minutes after she had pulled on an apron and began to wash his hair, though not as skilled as the maidservants who usually did it. “She was my Maker.”

“Why didn’t you kill her yourself?” he asked as she dumped a bucket of water on his head to rid the soap bubbles.

“Ah, little one, it is not so easy to kill our Makers,” she replied, rubbing the oils into his hair and began to dry it before combing it out. “You will learn this. You are a clever boy, but you will grow angry at Sasori and you won’t be able to truly hurt him. We are connected to our Makers no matter how much we dislike them.”

“What about Sasori’s Maker, un?” he asked, watching the blood that smelled like Feiyan wash down the drain in the middle of the room.

“Hm… There are only rumors,” Tuyet told him, tying his hair back with a cord and smiled when he turned to look at her. “I do not think Sasori is capable of feeling an attachment to anyone as normal vampires do. Feiyan told a story that Sasori was able to kill his Maker so that no one could control him, but that was many years ago, before Feiyan was Made.” She helped him dress and then brushed his arms with a smile. “Ahh…” she sighed. “I will miss you, clever boy. I hope that we will meet again if you return here and perhaps I will have a new treat for you.”

“Pancakes,” he said hopefully.

“I will try to learn pancakes for you,” she said, standing up and walked him back to where Sasori still stood, surveying the remains of Feiyan.

“Where are we going?” he asked, wondering if Sasori was angry that he killed the woman even though he himself didn’t care.

“We’ll take another ship,” Sasori answered, turning to look at him. The gesture made him stop suddenly because the redhead hadn’t looked him in the face for over a month. “Not back to your home,” he added when he opened his mouth to ask. The others began to approach, some with their humans, some alone. He wondered if the missing humans were dead or were released into the streets. “I will be teaching you what Feiyan failed to do, and you will not disobey me like you did her. What is your name?”

He scowled at him, bristling angrily and cast his eyes around at the adult vampires around them, all staring.

“Answer me,” came the pressing insistence of his Maker.

“Deidara,” he mumbled with hunched shoulders.

“Yes,” was the reply and they followed him out on the streets, the gleaming eyes of Feiyan’s vampires watching them leave like alley cats thirsty for a hunt.


End file.
